


Where Ours Will Lead

by KiraNightshade44



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Atmospheric, Dark and Gloomy, Dystopia, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gunslinger vibes, Hope in Dark Places, Loosely inspired by The Handmaid's Tale, Misogyny, POV First Person, POV Rey, Religious Fanaticism, Violence, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:13:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27427735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiraNightshade44/pseuds/KiraNightshade44
Summary: The floorboards creak with his passage across the cafe and the long silence that follows in his wake is telling. Everyone pretends not to watch his progress from the doorway to the bar in the same way he pretends he does not notice. He sits by where the register used to be when money still existed and he hangs his dusty leather jacket on the back of his chair. There are a pair of large guns in faded leather holsters on his hips, the chambers freshly oiled and gleaming. His guns are loaded. I know this without having to look at them.We all know what he is and why he is here.This work is BACK bitches!!!! :D P.S. Much love to all my devoted readers <3
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 61
Kudos: 47





	1. The Enforcer

**Author's Note:**

> This work was an original story. I have turned it into another Reylo tale. It just fits perfectly with those characters and although this story is bleak and oftentimes dark, the strange kindship these two shares will evolve past the restrictions of their dangerous world. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy <3

When I was young, I used to walk for hours. 

Up and down the lane to my house, through the gap between the fences of the backyards of my neighbours, along the lonely bike paths in our neighbourhood - I would walk and walk. The songbirds would serenade the lonely boulevards with their iridescent feathers gleaming like gasoline. I would take their feathers with me, these pretty leavings, fisted in my hand for my collection back home. I had an empty photo album I pressed them in and I would spend hours flipping through the pages in the sunbeam below my bedroom window, staring at the purple, green, and blue hues. 

Once, on one of my daily pilgrimages, I got lost. 

For hours, I wandered down unfamiliar roads and spied unfamiliar houses. If my brother had been with me, he would have been terrified, screeching at me to knock on doors and get directions. 

But I did not panic. 

I watched the sun and listened to the feeling in my stomach. It told me west, go west, follow the sun and you’ll get there. Hours later, when I returned home unscathed and in good spirits, I was bewildered by the panic I found in my father’s eyes. 

“I followed the sun,” I told him, all those years ago. He did not understand. 

My father and brother are dead now, but that compass remains. In the After, I do not have much occasion to use it and sometimes I wonder if it has faded away, along with so many other things. Another victim to a time that no longer exists. 

It’s late. I should be in bed. I should be asleep, right after saying my nightly prayers and repentances. Instead, I stand in front of my bathroom mirror and I stare, searching for the person who once walked the world without a care, the person who knew without a doubt that they would find their way home with only a skyward glance. I dare not speak her name now. If I do I might breathe life back into her and she would be my certain downfall. 

There is no room for ghosts, in the After. 

Where I am speaking to you now does not exist, at least not in the physical sense. I keep no records, no blueprints with which to lend a hand to my execution. These are words unspoken, a diary unfound. All I have are memories and this - the time of After - is a way station, a place in which I exist before death finds me. All I have are these thoughts - this collection of observations that are gleaned through averted eyes and careful fingers. I am not a person anymore. None of us are. We serve God and the Ministers and the state. We serve, or we die. These are our boundaries. Our borders in this new world. 

Our endurance. 

The mirror in my bathroom is my looking glass and it shows only lies. How bold a musing, how tempting to jump to negations. Hush, it's time to peek at the cracks. To find all the flaws and dishonesties, staring back through sullen glances. Do you want fiction? Do you long for rose-hued perfections? I long for them too. 

You will not find me here, in these reflections. These are just ghosts from Before, lurking behind these hazel eyes. It’s better that way. Safer. I’ll keep my imaginary diary, penned only through the floundering mind of survival. I go to sleep at night with whiskey breath and shaky hands, and I rise in the morning with deadened eyes and a silent tongue. My consolations for surviving the Resurgimus are small and altogether modest. 

I am alive. I breathe. 

I don’t know who you are; a figment of my imagination, a ghost, or just a piece of myself I’ll never get back. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that I cannot remain silent with my thoughts anymore. If I do, I might fall apart one day. Fly away into a thousand pieces right before they take me away, either to the firing squad, or to be placed back in the Redemption Camps. 

I can’t go back, so here I stay. Standing before my mirror with all the thoughts that could get me killed. You might say that thoughts are not dangerous. They’re held within, with no one to overhear them. To which I would tell you, thoughts are more dangerous than anything in the world, than any loaded gun or roped noose. 

There is a potential hidden behind thoughts. The same kind of potential that brought me here, to you. The same kind that killed my family and my lover, and everyone I used to know. The very same that brought us the After. 

The same potential that brought me to him, too.

*

A man comes into the cafe as I am waiting tables. 

It’s busy that afternoon, with the morning sermon having just let out. The ceiling fans do little in the way of relieving the stifling heat and the entire cafe reeks of sweat. 

I have not seen the man here before. 

Newness is not unheard of in this town, although it seldom sticks around. Like everyone else in the cafe, I take stock of him out of the corner of my eye. He is quite tall - taller than most of the men that come in for their daily brew. His stooped posture and plodding footsteps bespeak a man who has long since gotten used to the fact that he will never quite fit properly in the spaces he occupies. He is graceless in the way he walks, yet he holds a soft boundary with the hard edges around him. 

The man is a brute, simply put. Large and imposing. 

The floorboards creak with his passage across the cafe and the long silence that follows in his wake is telling. Everyone pretends not to watch his progress from the doorway to the bar in the same way he pretends he does not notice them watching him. He sits by where the register used to be when money still existed and hangs his dusty leather jacket on the back of his chair. There are a pair of large guns in faded leather holsters on his hips, the chambers freshly oiled and gleaming. His guns are loaded. I know this without having to look at them. 

We all know what he is and why he is here. 

Talk resumes in the cafe but it is subdued. Hushed for the sake of awe and fear. 

I finish pouring coffee for a group of Peons who just finished up a shift in the mines, then I make my way over to the bar, staring at the back of the newcomer’s head. When I reach him, I do not speak. I simply wait, head pointed low towards the countertop… But I want a peek, if only to dispel the nettle of nerves in my stomach. These kinds of men have a certain look about them. Once you see it, you know what to look for in the others. 

What I find, though, is unexpected. 

For the time being he is not looking at me - why would he, if he’s what I know him to be - and I steal my peek before returning my gaze to the counter. He has a long, expressive face. There are lines around his mouth and faint wrinkles around his eyes, so I place his age to be a little older than mine. His skin is spotted with moles, deeply tanned and a little oily, likely from the heat. I find a peculiar melancholy to him, in his narrowed eyes and slumped posture. His lips are plush and a little large for his face, but that only makes his strangeness more appealing. 

He is not what I would have thought, for one of his kind. 

Then, I remember not to get carried away as my gaze trips over the formidable iron on his hips. Only one of his station is permitted to carry around that kind of weaponry. I can tell when he turns to me. I can feel the weight of his regard and I unwittingly peer up at him before forcing my gaze elsewhere. His eyes are brown. There are flecks of green in them. 

“Coffee, please. Black, with cream on the side.” His voice is gruff, though it’s difficult to tell if this is due to thirst, or if this is the natural pitch to his voice. 

I fetch his order, listening as the patrons complain about the heat. I do not join in their grumbling. That would be improper. As I return to the man, I reach past him to place his cup in front of him and my sleeve catches on the counter lip. With my gaze pointed downward - taking care to stare at our hands instead of anywhere near his face - I watch in horror as my wrist becomes partially exposed. 

I know he sees it too; the looping ink on my right wrist and the jagged scars that strike through the ink in messy diagonal divots. 

In some suicidal temptation of fate, I look up at him again, expecting him to reach into his pocket for his handcuffs. He continues to stare at my wrist, his body still and taut. I put the creamer next to his cup and carefully tug my sleeves down. His eyes flick to mine and we’re both caught. Suspended, as the edge dangles at my heels. 

“Thank you,” he says and then he is ignoring me again, his attention fixed on the window outside. 

I do not breathe until my shift is over and I am back home. I won't sleep tonight. I keep checking for footsteps outside my apartment. Keep looking out at the street for black, nondescript vans. The ones that whisk unsuspecting sinners into the night, never to be seen again. No one comes, though. No black vans idling outside my apartment building. 

Maybe... Maybe I am still safe. 

I'll have to wear a longer shirt tomorrow. Or a sweater. The man won't be back. He's a newcomer and they rarely linger. Winterbourne never attracts any visitors, let alone the prey he is hunting. He will move on, just like the others before him. 

For now, the reflection remains intact. For now, I am safe.

*

I remember things. We all do, but we never speak of them, of course. No one wants to meet the Minister's judgment. No one wants to speak of the past and its sins. But there are memories. Never to be given voice or air to breathe. Never to be acknowledged. It's a secret of the masses now. Our dirty transgressions. It's what the Redemption Camps are for. Total cleansing. Total immersion. Total compliance. 

I won't go back. I can't. But I can whisper a few words out loud into my pillow at night. I can say “shit”, very quietly. I can say “fuck” if I really need it. I can say “no”. I miss that one the most, the ability to object. Reflections don't object. Reflections don't cry or swear. They follow. They remain soundless. 

But they do lie. Constantly. 

*

The man returns to the cafe today. 

I am surprised when he walks in and he must see it on my face, the way my breath stilts and I look anywhere but at him. I cannot tell what his expression is and I do not want to risk exposure by sneaking another glimpse of him. I move to another part of the cafe and hear him sit down at the bar behind me. Since his first visit, I have learned little more about him, only that he must be here to survey the village. Why else would he return?

I approach him to take his order; black coffee with cream on the side. Just like yesterday. Once he has his coffee, I keep busy with the other patrons - all three of them - and only return to the counter once to ask if he would like a refill. 

“No, thank you.” The words are a murmur. Unintelligible if it was not for our close proximity. Too close. We are too close and if anyone is paying attention…

I should walk away after that. I can feel him staring at me again, even though I think he is trying to hide it. His hair is longer than most men and his face is tilted away from the rest of the cafe, concealed behind that silver-flecked curtain of dark hair. Maybe he’s older than I thought. Maybe I have a death wish.

I peer up at him through my eyelashes as though that will somehow disguise my idiocy from him. He is already looking at me when my eyes find his and for an instant, the muted chatter in the cafe dims away to nothingness. I cannot recall the last time someone looked at me the way he does. It is not much of anything. It is merely one person, making eye contact with another, for no reason at all. A sin, punishable by death. 

I do not say anything in return, as is the custom for those of my station. Instead, I do something just as bad. Just as unforgivable. I nod my head. Silent affirmation. He blinks at me and then the world returns in a rush of sound. I leave him to his coffee and tend my tables, taking care not to look at him again until he leaves. 

There is another word I miss, although, it is not for lack of usage as it is a lack of true intention. Of true meaning. When I get home from the cafe that night, I walk over to my bed, put my pillow over my mouth and speak that word out loud over and over again until I lose count. 

Yes, yes, yes, _yes_. 

*

They call men like him Enforcers. It’s an apt title, just like all the rest of the titles they came up with after the Resurgimus. 

Menials - that’s what I am. Too low to marry, too low to address anyone of any station above mine. I serve. In a small capacity, granted, but I serve all the same. 

Peons do all the manual labour and in exchange, they are given a small plot of land and a wife to impregnate. Menials do not breed and that is one of the few reassurances of my station. No one will touch me. 

Mercators own most of the resources - well, whatever the Church _allows_ them to own. Without the existence of money, the mercators’ wealth comes from resources. They trade, they collect and they trade some more. Jacob, the owner of the cafe I serve, is a Mercator. He is one of the kinder ones. 

Lastly, there are agents of the church who uphold the Laws of the Lord; the Ministers, the Nuns and the Arch-Ministers, who run the territories. They hold the real power. They are the gavel, the noose, the trapdoor beneath everyone's feet. 

And the Enforcers are their executioners, enforcing the law of God, in all ways that they see fit. They exist outside of society, a dark threat on the horizon. When they come into town, everyone notices because they're only here for one thing - their reaping list. 

After the second day, I take to wearing sweaters in the cafe on the off chance the Enforcer returns. I never make eye contact, I never respond to his murmured “thank you”. I bring him his coffee, like all the other patrons, and I keep my head down. 

Reflections do not speak. Neither do Menials. 

The Enforcer gives me pause, though. It’s dangerous. It’s fucking lunatic to even consider him as much as I do, but he is different than the rest who come in every day. He speaks more slowly than the people around here, like he might be from the Mid-Western Territories. His inflection has a slight drawl, a flatness to his vowels that always make me strain to hear more of his voice. Perhaps he is simple-minded and he speaks slower because he has to. 

I have never heard of a simple-minded Enforcer, though. 

Or he is waiting for me to slip up. Someone may have reported me, although I have no idea for what. I do my job well, I keep to myself and I never speak. Not unless addressed. Not even then. 

He returns to the cafe, again and again, and my anxiety grows more potent. 

When I get home from work that night, I look in the mirror for hours. I stand there until my feet cramp and my eyes water, and then there are dozens of reflections staring back through my splintered vision. The reflection is pale. I don’t get much sunlight. The reflection’s hair is too long. I do not remember the last time I had my hair trimmed. The reflection is skinny and flat-chested. Boyish build and too straight stature. 

What does the Enforcer see, when he looks at me? It has been so long since I have looked at my body as anything more than just the vessel that carries me from work to home and back again. My body is a carriage, a transport of the quiet of my thoughts, containing the strangeness in my mind. To where I speak to you, each night, before my bathroom mirror. 

Before sleep, I lean on my pillow and whisper, in defiance with myself, “You’re welcome.”


	2. Something In Our Seas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is not smiling, but his eyes look warm. Warmer than they have any right to be. No one is looking when he leans towards me and his breath - it’s warm too, when it fans across my face, lifting the small hairs on my forehead to drift in the air. 
> 
> “Your favourite drink, miss. Make sure it’s black, please. With cream on the side. Like usual,” he whispers, like it’s our little secret. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song "The End" by Daughter was a huge influence for this chapter. 
> 
> When you dream, do you hear songs too? I wake up with one in my head every single morning. 
> 
> Just a random thought for your Saturday :)

There is a dead woman in the street. 

She has been there for three days. None of us looks at her, as we walk past, although I am pretty sure I see an old man spit on her dress. 

There is a scarlet ribbon around her wrist. Its tattered ends float in the wind. 

I don’t know how to grieve anymore. I have nothing left, no words or tears to offer to a woman I barely knew. She was the wife of a Peon, though I heard she was having carnal relations with another woman in town. I do not cry, but the reflection does. Quietly, when no one but you and I are looking. I don’t know how to soothe sadness. I have no comforts to offer, so when I catch the reflection crying I say nothing because silence is best. It dries the tears faster that way. 

Later, when I am at the cafe, there is more feverish speculation amongst the patrons than normal. They keep eyeing the Enforcer with beady wariness, but he either does not notice or has long since mastered the art of feigning indifference. My bet is on the latter. 

I approach him, the coffee pot a familiar weight in my hand. I am nervous, of course, as I am every day that he comes in here. I wish he would go away and yet… there is a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that I would not dare to call curiosity. He is different. A glaring anomaly to this ordinary hell. But I am still terrified of him. In these dark days, it is wise to have a healthy fear of others. Especially his kind. 

I go to pour his coffee, the sleeves of my cardigan carefully pulled down to my wrists, when his hand steals over the rim of the cup. I bounce back on my heels like he took a cattleprod to me, the coffee sloshing inside the pot. 

I am facing his profile and though I do my best to keep my eyes down, I can see him turn towards me, just slightly. Enough that I can tell he is looking at me. 

“Something different today, please.” 

Mid-Western, I decide right there on the spot. Now that I have more than “thank you” to go by, I can hear that prairie drawl in his voice better than before. I say nothing and he sits there, waiting patiently like there is no one else in the room. To an Enforcer, I suppose there isn’t. I'm not trembling. I think I am in too much shock for that, but I know I will be soon if I don’t get out from under his regard. 

Behind me, the cafe rapidly goes silent. 

My starched blouse is sticking to my skin under my wool sweater. It’s too hot for this attire, but it’s the only way to hide the inked markings he spotted on our first acquaintance. I am not sure if he is asking me a question, so I decide it’s better not to say anything at all. If he is here to try and trip me up, I refuse to help him. 

There are flies settling on the dead woman outside and I do not want to join her. 

I stare at his chin, counting his stubble and waiting with bated breath just like everyone else in the cafe. 

“What would you recommend?” he tries again. 

I am floundering. Unable to speak, to move, to think. Then, I finally find my voice and I am amazed at how strong it sounds. 

“Do you like green tea?”

The Enforcer leans back in his seat, the chair creaking so loudly in the tense silence that one of the men at the table behind me flinches. 

“Not really.”

“Black tea, then?”

“Do you mean like earl grey?” 

For a moment I think he might be smiling but I am too terrified to look up farther than the stubble of his jaw. 

“Yes. We have that kind.”

“I don’t like earl grey either.”

Is this a test? Is he going to execute me right here in the cafe if I bring him the wrong drink? I shuffle on my feet, trying to appear calm and unaffected. 

I have no idea how successful I am. 

“I can bring you a menu that has our selection.” 

There is a small scar on his chin. I stare at it, fighting the impulse to tremble. He makes a sound, then. It could be the beginnings of a chuckle, but it’s too quiet to tell. 

Behind me, dozens of pairs of eyes are drilling holes into the back of my head. There is an audience to my demise and I feel I am about two seconds away from dropping the coffee pot on the floor and jumping through the glass window to the street below just to escape it. 

“Well, then. I’ll have your favourite drink on the menu.” 

I almost look at him then, laws be damned, but by some miracle, one of the patrons drops his plate on the floor and the shattering glass seems to draw everyone’s breath in one unified gasp. There are mutters now, apologies and hails to the Lord, and in that moment of distraction my eyes flit up to his. 

He is not smiling, but his eyes look warm. Warmer than they have any right to be. No one is looking when he leans towards me and his breath - it’s warm too, when it fans across my face, lifting the small hairs on my forehead to drift in the air. 

“Your favourite drink, miss. Make sure it’s black, please. With cream on the side. Like usual,” he whispers, like it’s our little secret. 

Five minutes later, once the glass is cleaned up and the cafe returns to some semblance of normal, I bring him his tea. Earl grey, black with cream on the side. 

Do I have a death wish? 

I have to gall to peer at him from across the room, watching as he sips on it. He catches me watching and that warmth is in his eyes again. That non-smile. 

He drinks the whole cup before he leaves. 

*

I remember songs. 

Their lyrics occur to me upon waking, an internal soundtrack to this new life in the After. Music is outlawed. There are only state-mandated hymns, now. Homilies of the devout and holy. That doesn’t stop the mind, does it? That little reel will keep on going, no matter what the Ministers scream at us from the pulpit every Sunday. No Redemption Camp can burn away the muscle memory of sound. 

It lasts forever. 

My reflection likes to sing but I do not like to indulge her in this. If anyone were to hear… But, on the day the dead woman’s body is finally cleaned up from the street, I let my reflection sing. I remember the quiet guitar rift, the steady strum. The ethereal synthesizer, humming wordless lyrics. The song is about the end. The way out. 

I remember the first time I heard that song, stumbling upon it on one of my many insomnia induced binges into the depths of the internet back when I was in university. This was before the After, the Resurgimus and all the rest. When the internet still existed. When universities still existed. When I was still whole and fresh and hopeful. 

I remember thinking that for a song about the end of the world, it seemed so optimistic. So bright and beautiful. 

I have not thought about that song in years and I can’t help but wonder if I am thinking of it for the sake of the dead woman or for myself. It’s strange then, how the scent of bergamot whiffs into my nostrils as my reflection sings those muscle-memory words. 

This is the end. The end. 

But I am not sure anymore. 

*

When I wake in the morning, I feel different. That listlessness, that braided cavity in my guts no longer pangs with some hollow, discordant note. I rise with an eagerness I have not felt in a long time. My reflection does not seem so ghostly anymore. She tries to smile and averts her eyes immediately. Shy and unsure. 

Smiling is foreign now. It feels unsafe. 

Instead, I try to do the same thing he does with his eyes. The Enforcer. I try to soften the lines of imposed servitude around my mouth and try to imagine that the brown eyes staring back at me hold some semblance of life. Some measure of depth that cannot be seen in any other circumstances. 

We tell these lies so often that we forget how to wear the truth of our skin. 

*

The Enforcer has not been back to the cafe for four days. 

I would like to think that I do not take notice. That it does not matter to me where he has gone, or what fate he has met. That it is immaterial. 

It should be. 

I bring one of the regulars his coffee, pausing at his table to grab his empty plate. John likes his pancakes every morning. He prefers them uncooked in the middle, the dough sticky and sweet. I always let the other Menial in the cafe know this - Josephine, the cook. She is older than I am and surlier too. Jacob decided a long time ago that she would be best off in the kitchens, away from people and the potential wrath of a slighted patron. 

I take John’s plate and without bothering to look at me, he comments, “Guess the Enforcer is off to the next village. Doing our Lord’s great work.”

He crosses himself and I follow immediately after. 

But I do not think of communion or the Lord’s great work. After all these years, my scalp has still not grown accustomed to these tight buns all the Menials must wear as our mark of subservience. I have a fucking headache, my wools sweater feels like its trying to strangle me by way of heat exhaustion and I keep catching myself glancing at the door, like he might walk in and…

And what? Order my execution? Leave my dead body in the street for the rain and flies? Take me back to the Redemption Camps? Order another earl grey so we can continue this strange dance around at each other?

I am not sure what scares me more; the fact that any of these things could come to pass, or the fact that I want to see him again. 

“Must be,” I reply, demur and quiet. 

The door to the cafe opens. 

At the same time, a particularly strong great gale of wind and rain howls through the opening, wild and ferocious. Summers are a time of frequent storms. No one uses the word “hurricane” but I remember the weather channel when televisions still existed. I remember how hurricanes only happened to those living on the coast, and only ever in autumn. Never in June. What is happening outside today - the great swell of rain and wind, the flash floods in the villages that lie in the valleys to the east - it is a hurricane even if no one uses that sinful word. Words of science are unholy. 

I do not take notice of the hurricane outside because there is suddenly one inside me, swirling things to life that have no business in this new world. In this After. Memories of rubber boots, of mudcakes and gleeful screaming. Memories of running through flooded streets, ankle-deep in freezing water as we drunkenly sprinted to our dorms. Memories - why, there is a deluge of them, in that scant second where the outside world rages just at the doorstep to the cafe. 

Then, I see who has arrived. 

It is the Enforcer. The collar of his long, dusty coat is pulled up around his chin, and only the bridge of his nose and his eyes are visible. He looks spectral. Like the dinky Halloween decorations we put up as kids, back before Halloween and decorations of that sort were not outlawed. He looks just like the grim reaper, an otherworldly visitor to this plane of Great Nothing. Only, his clothes are not tattered and there is no skull staring out at me from his hood. Just his brown eyes. 

I almost forget to look away. 

I shuffle to the kitchen with John’s plate and resist the ridiculous urge to smooth the wrinkles from my apron. Then, I reach his favoured spot at the counter just as he does, my gaze fixed on the faded yellow linoleum as I fight the compulsion to cross my arms in front of me. Such a childish gesture of futile insecurity. 

“Hello.” 

The Enforcer sounds like my father used to after a really trying day of work. My father scrubbed toilets and washed classrooms for a living before he died. 

I somehow doubt the Enforcer’s fatigue is attributed to the same thing. 

My eyes dart towards John, who after taking notice that the Enforcer is back has suddenly grown fascinated with the Bible sitting at his table. It is the same one that sits at all tables. A psalm is to be read after every meal. I always read the same one, the lines memorized. 

No psalms occur to me now, though.

I do not reply to the Enforcer’s greeting. I wait, as I am supposed to and he takes his seat, sighing the way men do when they are beleaguered by the world’s burdens. 

“I would like a pot of tea, please. Your pick.”

I turn from him without missing a beat, determined not to react. 

If he is still here, it could mean he is not yet done his reaping for the Ministers. With the harvest in three months, there will be many reapings throughout the long and stormy summer months. This village is one of the larger ones in the area and with that woman executed in the street by another Enforcer only a week ago, they will linger. Always on the lookout for an outbreak of sinners. 

I do not sin. What my reflection does is beyond my control. 

Just inside the kitchen of the cafe, there is a cupboard where we keep all our tea bags. I have organized everything by type of tea, with large labels so Jacob can see it. He is losing his eyesight, as a great many of the elders seem to be these days. There might be something in the water. We do not talk about it - the last great war that happened all those years ago - but sometimes I wonder. 

I pick a breakfast tea. High in caffeine. The Enforcer seems like he might need it. 

When I return to the table, he has removed his coat. He wears a button-up shirt - thick like mine - and the scent of sweat and outside fills the air between us. 

Soon, John rises from his seat and utters a sullen grumble as he steps out into the rain. The door shuts with a resounding bang from the wind. From the corner of my eye I see the Enforcer reach for his holster. 

It’s a muscle memory. I know all about those. 

We’re alone in the cafe now. Josephine is in the back, smoking cigarettes in the pantry. I never tell on her, even though I know she will one day get caught and I will never see her again. We all have our vices. I happen to hide mine under the floorboards in my room, aged whiskey that tastes like death and brings dreamless sleep. 

We all have our vices. 

As the Enforcer relaxes and drops his hand from the butt of his gun, I detect another smell from him. Heady. Cloying. Metallic.

I pause as I place the teapot on the table, the cup rattling on the saucer in my other hand as I unwittingly search his shirt. The material is dark - too dark to see what I am looking for. Before I remember myself and put his cup down in front of him, a hand is reaching up and taking it from me. His skin brushes mine, calloused and rough. 

Bones, tendons, muscles - all seize up as I gape at him. Distantly, I hear a gasp and realize that it came from me. 

The Enforcer’s eyes are narrowed and I know I have angered him. 

“I-” But what am I going to say to him? What could I possibly tell him to cover up the fact that I was obviously examining him for blood?

“No earl grey today?” he asks, withdrawing his hand and the cup. He takes all the warmth in the room with him. 

I draw away too, standing at a respectable distance from him. Our orbits no longer collide and the sick hammer of my heart stutters and leaps. I have not touched another person since the camp. Not even by accident. That’s a great way to get yourself killed if you’re a Menial. 

I wonder what the punishment is for an Enforcer. 

“You don’t like earl grey.” 

Which is entirely true and entirely telling that I have remembered such a small detail from days ago. 

“I don’t like tea at all.” He is blinking at me in that careful, measured way of his and there is a stiff set to his posture that I could almost mistake for being defensive if such a notion were not so ridiculous. “But I gather you do. I never see you drinking coffee when I come here.”

He would never see me drinking anything when he is here. Menials are not permitted to consume anything when we are in the servitude part of our day - which is to say any time we are in public. I stare and stare at him, hardly flinching when a loud crack of thunder rattles the windows in their panes. 

He does not reach for his gun this time, his posture relaxed as he leans back in his seat. 

“This tea that you brought me - is this one your favourite?” 

His vowels are flat and artless, his syllables soft and intentional. I take note of the accent, as with every other time he speaks, and I wonder if he ever thinks of home, wherever that happens to be. 

I do not understand this man, nor my morbid fascination with him, and I don’t know why I am so hellbent on trying. My headache is forgotten as I stand perfectly still. My skin hums and my eyes cannot decide whether to settle on him or the countertop so they keep flicking back and forth. 

This is a trap. It has to be. Why would he care about my tea preferences?

“Or was it really the earl grey? The other day, I thought you brought me that one as a…”

He seems to hold his breath and I unconsciously do the same. 

Careful, I think at him but do not say. There are certain words we cannot utter - not even an Enforcer. 

“Or... Do you dislike it too?” 

God, that could mean just about anything. I am not looking at the countertop anymore. I can’t see the yellow paint on the walls, can’t hear the rain outside, or the raspy coughing from Josephine in the kitchen. I am statuesque as I look into his eyes and I think there might be a questioning tilt to my head but I have no idea what I would ask him. 

“There was a village I stopped at last spring. All they had was peppermint tea. After three months of drinking that, I can’t stand the smell.” 

He is warmth again, there in his eyes. It hurts to look at it, but I don’t think I can pry my gaze from him even if a Minister barged into the cafe and demanded we all drop to our knees in prayer. 

“I suppose now that I’ve told you I hate peppermint, you’ll bring me that tomorrow.”

What is he doing? What am I doing? Listening to him, hanging on to every word. Every. Word. I am starved. Starved for these bland sentences that serve no purpose. This isn’t even a conversation. I have not spoken, but he continues as though we are. 

And I am eating it up like it’s fucking candy.

Then, I get bold. 

“I like green tea.” 

He takes a sip of his tea like I did not just blurt out a personal detail to an Enforcer of all people. Like he has been waiting patiently for me to respond and now that I have, he can finally taste his drink. He winces at the flavour and I have the distinct urge to apologize. 

But I don’t. 

“Mm. Jasmine? Or that grassy stuff?”

“Plain,” I say. “Jasmine tastes like perfume.”

“Maybe you’ll serve me a plain green tea the next time I’m in.”

“You don’t like green tea.”

“No,” he says, quietly. 

“You don’t like tea at all.”

“I do not.”

He is looking at me and I am looking at him and we are alone. Truly alone, for the first time. I don’t know if I want to piss myself in terror or keep standing there so he might talk to me some more. This is the longest conversation I have had in over ten years. 

“Okay,” I say and immediately feel idiotic. None of this is okay. It’s damned confusing and terrifying. “I’ll bring you a green tea. Next time.”

The Enforcer nods at me and some of the tension fades from his face. 

I realize something, as he watches me with the kind of dedication Ministers reserve for their scriptures. He is nervous. He knows we should not be having this conversation, which makes us co-conspirators of sorts. Hostages to our words and the viability of guilt, of speaking like one person to another, without station or the hindrance of social decorum and religious law. 

Suddenly, I want to ask him what his name is. Or _was_. Before they took those away too and gave us our new names, for the After. John, Josephine, Jacob, Jemimia, Jason, Jaden… These are our After names. I want to ask him, but such a question would surely get me killed. There is a strange attraction to that risk, like the way one feels when they look down from a tall building and feel compelled to meet the earth. No matter how far the fall. 

I turn to go, ignoring that heady impulse. When I reach the door to the kitchen I turn back, my mouth contorting around unsure words. He is still peering at me, his hair sitting in wet waves across his forehead. His jacket is dripping puddles on the floor. 

We’re both waiting. Measuring the jump. 

“I thought you had gone,” I say and my hands twist into folded knots in front of me. 

He notices - although I suspect there is not much this man does not notice. 

“Not yet.” 

We stare, uncertain and tentative. The silence in the cafe is deafening. I wish we had a radio. Anything to break apart that cautious repose. 

“Good,” I say before I know I am going to. 

The rest of the afternoon passes quietly, the storm tapering off into a light drizzle outside. The Enforcer is my only patron for the rest of the afternoon and he does not leave until shortly before close. 

This time when I take his dishes, the tea remains undrunk.


	3. Dust and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you hurt?”
> 
> Why do you care, I want to scream. I don’t say anything and then the Enforcer shakes me, only once, but hard enough that my jaw rattles. 
> 
> “Were you injured? Answer me, Jane.” 
> 
> “No,” I breathe, the word vehement and clogged with tears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay - I promise I am working on the other stories I have going lol. This one has just been so much fun to write. Refreshing to do something different. I don't know if you guys have read Destinies on here - they did a story called Sandstorm that I LOVE because of how gritty it is. Truly recommend that one and any of their other works, really. 
> 
> I am about halfway done the ending for Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks and I have started the next chap of We, The Children of the Night - so more updates to come sooooooon! 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! This chap is action-y and suspenseful so hang onto your butts! 
> 
> ***Warning ahead for graphic violence and gore.

It is sunny the day we are bombed. 

The Ministers call these would-be terrorists the Ultimate Enemy. They lambast about them from their pulpits every Sunday and we silently bear it in a pall of fear.

But, secretly, every time I hear the Ministers shout about these nefarious Ultimate Enemies, I cannot help but think of ultimate frisbee. Every single time, every cry of Ultimate Enemy traces my mind back to that inane… sport? Game? Frisbee is stupid enough with adding the word ultimate in front of it. Although to be fair, that game was banned along with all others. 

No great loss there, I suppose. 

According to the Ministers, these Ultimate Enemies routinely steal from the state, pilfering food and supplies for their hidden bunkers, where they bide their time for their next strike against the God-fearing man. No one speaks of them outside mass. I think we're all afraid of any association with that name, uttered or otherwise. All it would take is for someone to make a call to the Ministers and a black van will show up outside your home, with men inside ready to whisk you away to places unknown. Unless they send the Enforcers. Then, you know you’re dead. Dead, before the gunshot rings out, dead before they find you. Dead and gone, even though we’re already there anyway. 

It’s not clear where all the bombs have been planted, but what becomes apparent quite quickly is that there are _many_ of them. Strewn across the Winterbourne like bloated tumors, waiting to blow. They detonate in near-perfect synchronicity, all in the mid-afternoon, just as the lunch rush clears out of the cafe. 

Before the mayhem begins, the day is going by just like any other before it. John sits near the window with his coffee and his Bible. The Enforcer is sitting in his usual spot at the bar, sipping on his tea. As I take out the broom to sweep (and now I lay me down to sleep, amen), it occurs to me that I have no idea what the Enforcer does when he is not here at the cafe drinking the tea he does not like, typically with his cream on the side and his freshly oiled guns gleaming under the waxy cafe lights. Surely, there aren’t that many people to round up in this tiny village. I know the Enforcers meet with the Ministers to collect their reaping list, but beyond that, I never see them out and about in the streets. 

I pause with the broom in my hand, staring at the lazy swirl of dust motes in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

I am growing too curious about him. This morbid fascination needs to stop. I cannot rightly say where it comes from, this rabid curiosity; I’m not sure I find him all that attractive, with his mixed-matched features and his somber regard... but there is something there that compels me to pick apart his features regardless. We’ve barely exchanged anything more than pleasantries. Dangerous pleasantries, yes, but nothing earth-shattering. Nothing that is even strictly illegal, if one does not pay attention to the lengthy staring. It is high time I stop this reckless seesaw between my uncertain desires and the perilous risk they impose upon my very life. My reflection agrees with me - every morning she tells how careless I am getting. That I cannot forget what he is. What they all are and what his kind did to Rose…

I sing in my head to drown out the threat of remembrance and keep sweeping. 

“Jane, more coffee,” John says without looking up from his bible. 

At the counter, I see the Enforcer’s head tilt to the side and I realize that he probably does not know my name - unless he has asked around for it. If he did not know it before, he has inadvertently learned it now. The Enforcer has a map folded out before him and he has not taken his eyes off of it since I brought him his green tea. I did not give him cream with it and when he asked why, I murmured that it would ruin the flavour. 

I wish I did not feel such gratification from watching him sip on it all afternoon. 

I look up from my dirt pile on the floor and it is curious then, how I hesitate before going behind the counter for the coffee pot. Menials do not hesitate. When they are beckoned, they go. There is no pause or deliberation. 

John notices, his mouth pulling into a frown. The Enforcer turns his head even more and all I can see beyond his hair is the sharp profile of his nose. I know he is looking at me too, wondering why in the world I would dare not meet John’s demand right away. 

I am not looking at either of them.

The floor is shuddering beneath my feet. I don’t know when it started - all I know is that it is more noticeable with each passing second - and just as the cups and plates begin to rattle on their shelves behind the counter, the Enforcer is out of his chair faster than the human eye can track. His deep voice is booming across the cafe to _get down_ _right now_. I can hardly hear him over the steady rumble that has now grown into a groaning roar. For a moment there is sound - a deafening crash of glass, wood, and metal disintegrating under the pressure of fire and kinetic energy - and somehow, I heed the Enforcer and fling myself to the floor. He quickly follows suit, his dark hair scattering across his forehead and into his eyes as his sturdy body thumps into the hardwood floor. 

John does not heed the Enforcer’s warning. 

The windows explode and as my cheek strikes the floorboards, scraping my skin to blood, I watch as a piece of glass flies into the side of John’s neck. He falls from his seat, his hands scrabbling at his throat and crimson splashing the floor around him in sticky puddles. I stay down as splinters of wood rain down on my curled up form. The Enforcer is behind me and he does not make a sound. I cannot see outside anymore - all I know is that there is a tsunami of dust billowing down the street and it has gone dark. Sunlight suffocates and I with it, choking on shock and dust. Soon, John stops moving and all I can make out of him is a stiffening shadow. Ringing fills my ears. I blink away dust from my eyes and there are tear tracks through all that dirt and blood. 

Washing away what will never come clean. 

I am not in the cafe anymore. I am home. My real home. Before the After. Before the Resurgemus. Potted plants snake down the floor. Boardgames line my shelves and a beat-up laptop sits on my coffee table. There are stickers all over it from different concerts I went to over the years. The curtains in the living room are navy blue and they complement the charcoal carpet and gainsboro walls. Rose sits next to me and her chest heaves with sobs. The engagement ring on her left hand is digging into my palm as I grip her close on our funky yellow loveseat, the first piece of furniture we purchased together. We try not to scream when fighter jets fly over our building. All we can hear are people in the streets, all that screeching and roaring humanity. Cars honk, metal crashes together and children weep for parents that will not stir from the places they have fallen, bullet holes riddling their clothes and tires treads staining their bodies black. There are tanks in the streets, soldiers shooting each other, unlucky civilians and anyone foolish enough to get in their way. I have my service pistol, but I know it’s no match for the automatic weapons they’re using, out where we used to walk to the farmer’s market on Sunday mornings. It’s madness outside, a world unrecognizable. 

But it’s alright. I have a plan. We just have to wait it out one more night. We just have to…

“Jane... Look at me, Jane.”

I blink and Rose is gone. Her beautiful black hair and dark brown eyes - they’ve vanished. All I can see are thick motes of dust and John’s cooling body. Rough hands grab my arms and I am no longer lying on the floor. There is strength in that grip. Fingers dig painfully into my bony arms and when I blink away webs of dizziness, I discover a face looming over mine. 

The Enforcer is glaring down at me like this is all my fault. Like I lit the fuse. Belatedly, I realize I am crying. I stop so suddenly my stuttering breaths are cut into halves, choked emotion wrestled to its cage where it now belongs. 

“John is dead.” I am trying to adopt the Menial voice again but hysteria is skinning down my performance to drowned hiccups. 

The Enforcer doesn’t seem to buy it and I don’t have it in me to care. If I close my eyes for too long, I’ll see her again and then, I might start screaming. There is no reflection to weather these tangled impulses, to tamper down the bite of the past. It’s just me here. 

“Are you hurt?”

 _Why do you care_ , I want to scream. I don’t say anything and then the Enforcer shakes me, only once, but hard enough that my jaw rattles. 

“Were you injured? Answer me, Jane.” 

“No,” I breathe, the word vehement and clogged with tears. 

“I’m taking you back to your apartment.”

So he knows where I live. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. 

Gunshots ring out from far away. The other Enforcers are out hunting then, searching for the culprits. For those Ultimate Frisbee sinners, sulking away back to their imaginary bunkers. I think maybe I’ve lost my mind a little. Or maybe I’ve been losing it all along. Little pieces chipping off along the way until there is nothing left. 

There is a thin line of blood down the side of the Enforcer’s cheek and a wildness in his eyes that makes me think of wolves. Lively and feral, with a touch of fear. He is out of breath and I know I am returning to my senses when I start noticing these small details. His hands are shaking - badly enough that I can feel it against my arms. He is pale - far paler than I’ve ever seen him. No hint of summer tan against the ash, dirt, and avidness in his features. 

“Why are you still here?” I ask through numb lips. Not outside, with his brothers, trying to find the insurgents. He is here. Picking up the pieces of me scattered on the floor. 

It might have been the wrong thing to say. His hands slip from me and he stands up straighter, his expression schooling itself into a mask. I know all about masks. I wear one every day. 

“It’s not safe.”

Nowhere is, but I don’t think to tell him that. I can’t settle on one thing for too long. I keep glancing from his face to the floor, to the cash register. Everything is covered in splinters of wood, dust coating my sweater and my hair. It’s all over the Enforcer’s hair too. His eyebrows appear to have greyed, ageing him in a way that would have been farcical were it not for the situation at hand. 

The sun is slowly filtering back into the cafe. 

“Josephine is in the back. I should see if she is okay.” Is that my voice? It does not sound like it belongs to me. It’s hoarse and too quiet. I can’t hear very well, save for the ringing in my ears. 

And the Enforcer… He cuts through the looming insanity, just a touch away from consuming me whole. “We’ll check together. Then I’m taking you home.” 

Thankfully, Jacob is home today with his wife. Sick, with the flu. Maybe their home was bombed too. The Enforcer turns around and I follow after him, tethered to his proximity and the false sense of safety that brings me. Dust rains down from the ceiling and for a moment I cannot figure out why I can hear people shouting outside so clearly, until I realize all the windows are gone. Blown out, tiny shards all over the floor. Glittering like stones beneath water, scattered in John’s blood. 

The kitchen is empty when we walk in. Cigarette smoke lingers in the air, but Josephine is nowhere to be seen. I touch the counter, where I lean every day to cut lemon wedges for the iced tea. It’s cobalt blue tiles are cool to the touch and I want to lean my cheek on it. Cool down the blood pumping through faulty valves, punctuating every other rhythm with a skip, a jump, a skitter. 

The Enforcer examines the kitchen in silence and then without a word, he grabs my upper arm. His entire hand wraps around the limb easily. I remember what I was like before, when a healthy layer of fat dimpled the undersides of my arms with cellulite. I remember muscles from years of training, how thick my biceps and thighs used to be. I am skin and bones now. A clothed skeleton, lingering in this world far past my welcome. 

The Enforcer tugs me further into the kitchen, towards the back door, leading me carefully over a fallen cupboard. Cups and plates lay in smashed ruin, my shoes crunching over their remains before I think to step over them. Maybe Josephine made it to her apartment. Maybe she didn’t. I don’t know if I care either way. We stop at the doorway and then his hand drops to his right holster and his gun is out. I wonder how heavy it is and how much effort it would take to pull the trigger on it. It looks cumbersome. Impractical. 

He handles it well, the gun pointed towards the ground as he lowers himself to half his height and beckons me to do the same. Out back, we face an alleyway. It’s empty, but I can hear shouting in the street beyond. Gunfire. The crash of metal. I do not tremble, but my heart is racing. Against the past, against the present. Racing, from the scant few inches between myself and this instrument of death. The Enforcer does not look scared and his grip on the gun does not slacken. He looks grim and calculating, measuring for a threat I cannot begin to understand. We have never been bombed before. They usually reserve that honour for the larger villages, those skirting what used to be the big cities before those fell into disuse. 

I glance up at the sky, finding it jarring that it should be so blue. So cheerful. 

“How do you feel about climbing a fence?” The Enforcer is looking at me again and now he is measuring _me_. Calculating, looking at my ankle-length dress and my thick cardigan. 

I don’t know why he bothers to ask. I know I’m climbing a fence in the next twenty seconds no matter how I feel about it. 

“I was really good at the rope climbing test in school.” I do not know why I am telling him this. This non-sequitur about me - about what I used to be - that he does not need to know. 

His eyes widen for an instant, his eyes flicking over my face as though looking for a lie. Then, he nods and points to the chain-link fence at the end of the alley. “Same principle. When I say go, you’re going to climb up first and then I’ll follow. Stay behind me after that. At all times.”

I can’t help it. I grab his arm and that muscle-memory of fright is not quite strong enough to make me regret touching him. He just looks impatient, so I make it quick. 

But this one question could go for miles. 

“Why?”

“It’s the fastest way.” I can barely see the moles on his face through the dust coating his skin. “There’s too many of them out on the street and you’re not armed so we can’t-”

“Why are you helping me?”

Enforcers do not escort Menials to their homes - particularly not in a gunfight. It’s not the way things are done. Menials escort themselves home. They do not bear company. Ever. 

He stares at me, unflinching when a particularly loud gunshot goes off in the next street over. I do not flinch either and a whirlwind of ingrained habits go off in my mind, from a life that does not exist anymore. Check blindspots, do not enter a scene without establishing a perimeter, do not… 

Oh, but that’s finished business now. 

The Enforcer’s silence is etched into the firm line of his mouth and I know he won’t answer my question, not today. Maybe never. 

“Lead the way,” I say and I think I am calmer now than I ever was. I don’t know when the madness seeped away, but I know I can climb the fence. I can do whatever he tells me to and maybe I won’t think of Rose again. I can hold the tide back until I am in my apartment because that is what the whiskey is for. Forced hibernation from the past and that unanswerable question can remain where it is safest. Tucked away, under his bootheel. 

The Enforcer moves fast, but I already know this, so I do my best to keep up with him. Our shoes click against the pavement, far too loudly for the fear in my blood. I check our blindspots, that dead old protocol screaming from the grave as I search every crevice and hiding spot along the way. As I do, I almost miss the look the Enforcer sends my way, but both of us are too keyed up for acknowledgement. He stops by the fence and when he should have already started climbing his way up, he waits for me at the bottom, his hands tented together and his knees stooped. 

“Go Jane.” He doesn't have to tell me twice. 

I don’t ask questions now, not with the top of the fence looming over us and with that wild look in his eyes. I yank my skirt up and I know he is seeing them, just like he saw the one on my wrist all those weeks ago. Ink, looping and curling along my legs. 

I step onto his awaiting hand and defying gravity, I am hoisted high in the air, my hands grasping thin cords of metal as I smash my shoes into the tiny diamonds of the chain-link fence. I reach the top and I do not feel when the sharp metal slices my palm open. There is blood, slippery and warm as I try to find purchase, and then there is panic, as I peer down at him waiting for me to move my fucking ass. 

Beyond him, at the mouth of the alleyway, I see a man standing there. 

The Enforcer does not even blink at the widening of my eyes. He’s spun around, his gun is out of his holster and there are three gunshots, booming into the humid summer air. I turn back to the fence, my arms shaking with effort as I finally grasp the top and yank myself over. I scratch the shit out of my legs in the process, but none so bad as the cut on my hand. I do not feel any pain and my eyes dart to the body on the ground, blood baking into the cement. I feel a thrill that the Enforcer aim was true. The man is dead. 

I jump the rest of the way down, my knees popping painfully with my landing. 

The Enforcer is up and over the fence in half the time I took. I’m rusty. Here in the After, with a life of little food and no exercise, I am reduced to a shell. Before his boots even touch the ground, he grabs my arm and then we are running along the backs of buildings and my blood drips onto my clothes. He has not put his gun away. I am secretly grateful. 

We make it five blocks before I begin to slow. 

“Jane,” he says, only once. His tone is warning, an entreaty not to stop. 

I have no choice. I either stop, or I will collapse. I am dizzy and I vaguely wonder how much blood I’ve lost. “I can’t.”

God… I don’t remember the last time I said that. I can’t. I _won’t_. It's all there, in my sagging form as I droop against the bricks at my side. I don’t hear gunfire anymore but the wildness has not faded from his eyes. They appear almost black, right now. Dark and unknown. 

“I can carry you, but if someone comes we’re fucked.”

I don’t gasp at his words. I think I’m too far gone for that. Besides, any leverage I had against him was gone the moment he saw my legs. 

I nod, pushing off the wall, only to sway like a drunk bowing to the inevitable crash of limbs and gravity. There are arms around me then, under my legs and shoulders. Then, I am off the ground and every step he takes jostles me back to alertness, only for the webs of darkness to creep back in. 

“I’m sorry, Rose,” I think I say and then I acquiesce to the inevitable, as the Enforcer carries me away and away. He smells like a forest, earth and pine and rain, and my head lolls on his shoulder when I pass out. 

*

There is pain when I wake up. Burning, lancing, _stabbing_ pain. 

“Ow,” I mumble through parched lips. My throat sticks together and I choke, hacking for air or water or both. A wet towel brushes across my lips and I stick my tongue out, hardly able to crack open my eyes. 

“Almost done. Just a few more to go.”

I know this voice. 

“You don’t like tea.” It comes out as a croak as I sputter for breath. 

“I like green tea.”

I start to laugh. It sounds desperate and a little crazy, and I realize I have not laughed - truly laughed - in a long time.

When the Enforcer speaks again, he sounds appalled; with my insanity, the sound of my laughter, or with me in general, I do not know. Probably all three. 

“Hush, Jane. It’s past curfew.”

My laughter tapers off at that and I finally manage to pry my eyelids open. A bowl filled with scarlet water sits in my line of sight. A spool of black thread sits next to it and I blink as I take in my nightstand, covered in droplets of water and blood. I remember when I was first assigned to this tiny bachelor apartment. It had come furnished. The nightstand was one of the furnishings, some poorly constructed relic from those gigantic box stores that once had staged rooms inside, one for every room in the house. The nightstand is supposed to look like it’s made of wood, but the laminate is peeling off the corner closest to me, revealing the particle board underneath. As the Enforcer stitches up my hand, I think to myself that there is nothing is more telling about my state of being than that ugly fucking nightstand, with its peeling veneer and tacky yellow particleboard peeking out. 

Then, there is pain again. Bright and sharp. 

I hiss and sit up, only to meet the Enforcer’s eyes, peering at me from over his shoulder with silent, imperious command. It’s my turn to be appalled then, with how much I forget myself around him. How much I forget my place. So, I lay back down, ignoring the sick tugging sensation in my hand as he sows me back together again. The fence - that was what cut me - and I begin to feel the sting from my other meagre wounds. Scratches on my legs and arms, and a slight tearing pain in the muscles of my thighs. 

The thread makes another small, unimportant rasp as the needle pierces tender skin. The sound is almost like a throat clicking and I win a brief struggle with my stomach not to spew its contents all over the side of my bed. I’ve always been a wimp when it comes to my own blood, a little irony that was never lost on me in the Before. Freeway accidents with blood and body parts all over the turnpike - no problem. But if I get one little cut on my hand from a broken dish in the sink, Rose has to walk me to the sofa so I don’t keel over and crack my stupid head open on the kitchen counter…

My head spins for a moment, whiplashed from the events of today and the events of my entire life, but somehow I keep the past at bay. This time. 

“I had to disinfect the cuts on your legs.” I peer up at the back of the Enforcer’s head, privately grateful for the diversion. He carries on in the paradoxically deep yet infinitely soft way of his, as though he’s well aware of how sonorous his own voice is and how it trebles the very air molecules around him. “None of those needed stitches though.”

“That’s good.” 

We lapse into silence, and I do my best to ignore those meaty rasps of the needle going into my skin. I have some whiskey left under my floorboards, but I don’t so much as glance towards them, knowing the Enforcer will see right through me. He might have carried me through the village and he might be stitching up my hand, but he still is what he is. 

And I still am what I am. 

“How long have you been here?” I whisper, trying to not to panic when I see no sunlight coming through my closed curtains. 

The Enforcer pauses and I think I see his shoulders tense but I am too busy staring at my drapes. They’re beige and ugly as hell. Not something I would have ever picked out Before. 

“You were in bad shape.” His voice is muffled because he is turned away from me and all I have is the steep slope of his back and the wide angles of his shoulders. His hair is long, brushing past the collar of his shirt. From here, I can count the greys in his hair. Strands of pure silver, perhaps only a dozen all told. There only seems to be more of them, I realize, because of how dark his hair is in contrast. 

I want to ask him how old he is. I want to know if he likes beige for curtains or if he hates that non-colour too. I want to know his name and why he is still here. I ask none of these things and wince through the pain in my hand. 

“Shock does that to people. You didn’t bleed too bad though, from what I can tell.” 

I hear scissors snip. He gently wipes at my hand and grabs a pack of gauze from somewhere in front of him. My medicine cabinet - he must have gone through it. There isn’t anything in there that can get me arrested. Just my cabinet and the mirror, absolved from guilt until I stand before it once more. My daily confessional. I stretch my legs ever so slightly, frowning at the lumps in my mattress. When my toes wiggle independently of constriction, I pause to wonder when he took off my shoes. I remember nothing after passing out in his arms, nor any of the journey here. 

I think I might be okay with that. 

He wraps my hand, his fingers rough against the softness of my skin. But his grip is soft, holding my hand to him with little effort at all. 

“Shock also makes you chatty, apparently.” 

I freeze, my fingers locking together in his hand. He pauses too, the roll of gauze pulled far enough out that I can see it past his arm. Then, he blows out a breath and I can hear how tired he is, just from that one sound. 

“You’ve said more than two words to me. I consider that chatty, by your standards.”

Then, he is wrapping up my hand again, bypassing my apparent anxiety like he can’t feel it in my bones. I breathe in and out, slow to find a normal rhythm again. I don’t understand, but part of me wants to. Part of me wants to cross that gulf between us, if only to confirm I’m not losing my damned mind. 

“Thank you.” That’s safe enough, then. And I mean it, even though I shouldn’t. 

“Salgado had beautiful brushwork. No?” 

If his comment about my chattiness had me land-locked to weariness, then this little sentence flings my entire nervous system into full-blown panic. Limbs seize up, my heart relocates to my throat and I lurch up in bed, wrenching my hand away from him and tightly pressing my body against the wall behind me. The bandage is hanging off my hand and my thighs sting from the scratches I took from the fence. 

I take no notice of these things.

I stare at the Enforcer’s back, unblinking and wild-eyed. This is it. This is where he tells me that it’s the firing squad or back to the redemption camps. The nuns saw the ink too, but nothing they did would make it go away. No amounts of whippings, or sticking my head under frigid running facets, or depriving me of food. No amount of repentance or stripping me naked to run laps in the dead of winter. 

The Enforcer’s broad back is chilling and absolute. 

Then, he breathes, and his head droops forward before he turns to face me, his boots knocking into my nightstand. He catches the bowl before it drops to the floor with reflexes I can scarcely credit. I used to have reflexes like that, but not anymore. They were taken away from me, along with a great many other things. He saves the bowl but the bloody water goes everywhere. 

And I can’t take my eyes off of him, not even when they prickle from dryness. 

Slowly, as though fearful I might burst into flames at the slightest wrong movement, the Enforcer places the bowl back on the nightstand and simply blinks at me. I note that the wild black of his eyes from earlier has gone. They’re back to hazel, watching me watch him. 

I can’t go back. I can’t, I can’t, _I can’t..._

He shifts a little and I stiffen. His lips fold together, the beginnings of words pursing his lips before his shoulders relax and his gaze softens. 

Then:

“I went to an exhibit of his once. Salgado, I mean. It was across the pond, back when I was in college. _The Serpent_ , I think it was called.” His eyes flit all over my face and somehow, he is seemingly unperturbed by the terror he finds there. “I’m not an artist or anything, but his work seemed good. I like the pieces with people better than that landscape bullshit. If I wanted to stare at a forest all day, all I have to do is go outside.”

So he lives near a forest. That’s great. That’s fantastic. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t take me away, back to that place where women cry into the night and sunlight falls through metal bars on the windows. 

The Enforcer continues to watch me, in that quiet way of his. I cannot divine what he might be thinking, sitting here on my bed, with my blood all over his hands, while my heart tries to decide it would rather burst out of my chest now, or just wait for the inevitable moment when he reaches for those massive, impractical guns in his holsters. 

“Well… I better go. The Brothers will wonder where I am.” The Enforcer stands up, taking careful, measured steps across the room. He’s so tall, his head almost reaches the ceiling. I barely hang onto that one word - brothers - and whatever part of my mind that is not consumed by terror comprehends that he is likely referring to the other Enforcers in town. 

Something breaks inside me, plucking me from the fear before I can lose my nerve all over again. “ _The Snake_ ,” I say, rasping and oddly repentant. 

He stops at the doorway, his spine straight and his hands pulled into fists before he relaxes again. His eyes are warm when they find me over the line of his shoulder. 

“His show in London was called _The Snake_ ,” I say and then, pausing, fretting, gasping, I cross a little bit of that gulf. Tight-rope walking on a splintered cable. “ _Fiddle and Drum_ is my favourite painting of his.”

“Mine too.”

Our eyes meet across the length of my apartment and neither of us says goodnight when the Enforcer opens my apartment door and leaves. 

A while later, once I am calm enough to do more than remain curled up in a ball on my bed, I finish up the bandage on my hand and mop up the water off the floor before it rots the floorboards. Only after I’ve shut off the lights do I settle under the covers in my bed. Pale moonlight filters in through the cracks between my drapes and wall, and I push my skirt up, moving my leg so I can see her. 

I ignore the new scratches on legs that are shiny with disinfectant and stare down at the woman’s face there. She looks away from me, down towards my knees. Her hair is black, like the Enforcer’s. Green, red, and purple ink loops and spirals all around her, and the fine silver scars that run across her hair and face make me think of the fine silver strands in the Enforcer’s hair. The nuns used steel wool on me once, but the ink remained anyway. 

Some things never fade away. 

I fall asleep staring at her face, but it’s not really her I see. It’s black hair, shot through with a dozen strands of pure silver and warm brown eyes.

The hollowness within me fills up, just a little. 

( _Fiddle and Drum,_ Andrew Salgado, 2016)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These Ultimate Enemies really sound similar to The Resistance. Hmmmm...


	4. Still Corners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Enforcer, one of the world’s last executioners, holds his hand out to me under the cover of darkness. 
> 
> And I take it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is named after a really talented band called Still Corners. The song they listen to in this chapter is The Trip - at least, in my head. I left the description ambiguous so the reader can imagine whatever song they like. There is something beautiful about not spelling out every little thing. 
> 
> Enjoy <3

No matter what I do, my left hand is always the roughest. 

Small nicks up and down my knuckles, a papercut just beneath the edge of the nail bed. A vertical split in my index nail, grown beyond repair - that one is the worst of all, as it is apt to catch on errant threads and rip down to the quick. I am right-handed so it is a mystery as to why my left hand always suffers more. Particularly the fingernails. 

My left hand also happens to be the hand I sliced open on the fence yesterday. 

Two days after the attack on our village, Jacob asks me who stitched it up. I tell him I did it myself. Lucky I am right-handed or that might have been harder to explain.

These insignificant injuries do not capture my attention today. It is my mangled pinky that I examine, the nail torn in half, blood clotted and sharp with irregularity. I pause, the broom in one hand and my other appendage held beneath within a sunbeam. I stare and stare but no matter how long I regard my damaged little finger, I cannot recall how this injury happened.

Was it when I climbed the fence? Or was it after, in the unknown journey the Enforcer and I took across the town? I don’t know why I keep examining this superficial wound when the cut on my palm and the assortment of scratches on my legs are much more considerate.

“Everything alright, Jane?”

I look up from inspecting my hand and aim a tired, wilted smile at Jacob. 

“Yes, Jacob. Sorry, I’ll get back to work.” 

It has taken almost two weeks for us to replace the windows in the cafe and clean out the debris from the attacks. Us - as in Jacob, Josephine, and myself. We survived the bombings. Others did not. I have never put windows up before but Jacob is kindly and patient and shows us how. He does not comment when Josephine lights a cigarette in the kitchen and nor do I. No one will smell it, with the scent of fresh paint and wood chips lingering in the air. 

John’s blood has left a stain on the floor. Sometimes, I can’t look away from that stain, spellbound by that faded burgundy mark. I lived. John did not. 

And I don’t feel much of anything. 

This morning, we attended the Sunday service. The Ministers are in overdrive, apoplectic with fury. Aside from the man the Enforcer shot in the alleyway, none of the other Enforcers succeeded in capturing the Ultimate Enemies who bombed our village. Now, the Enforcers are out scouring every home, every apartment and storefront, every alleyway and dumpster in search of them. But we all know they’ve gone. Drifted away to their next target. 

I wish I could be brave and join them. Rose was brave. 

I have not seen the Enforcer since he left my apartment that night. He, like the others, is out on the hunt. Their reap - if they ever find it - will be plentiful for the impending harvest. 

I am fearful he has left Winterbourne for good, scouting out the arid prairies and ambling foothills to the south and west. This thought does not fail to make me nauseated every time I happen upon it. His absence has left a strange vacuum behind and I cannot help but relive all his fumbling attempts to engage in conversation with me. Every wayward glance, every non-smile he has sent my way. Every crinkle of his eyes. 

He saved my life and I still do not know why. 

I do not listen as the Ministers slam their fists on the pulpit, spittle flying from their lips. Inside, in a place I thought died in the After, I feel something other than bland acceptance. For the first time in years, I feel fear. Will I ever see him again? Will things be different now, that we’ve seen past those affixed masks?

And why, oh why, do I care so much?

*

He has not returned. 

Life resumes - well, whatever version of life this is supposed to resemble. The town rebuilds. There is a tightness to everyone’s eyes, a forcefulness to our prayers and a furtiveness to the way we all watch one another. 

Waiting for one of us to slip up. 

Normally, I would partake, if only out of sheer terror. Instead, I feel hazier with each passing day. It takes me a week to name the feeling within my chest. That pang, that keen edge of despair. And when I look in the mirror each morning, practicing the subservience that all Menials wear, all I can see is the lie on my face. Apparent and glaring out from my eyes. 

When that hollowness grows to be too much, my hand will steal down to my thigh, where the black-haired woman resides. Hidden beneath all those layers of godliness. I have not been eating much lately and it shows. My face is gaunt, my eyes flat. I will have to stop this moping soon or someone will mistake it for guilt. 

But I don’t know how to stop. All I see are brown eyes, warm with hidden smiles. 

I want to curl up in my bed and sleep forever. 

*

There is someone outside my apartment. 

Out in the hall. I can see the shadow of their feet under my door and I can hear the way the floorboards protest their weight. The floorboards in this building are old and unkempt, creaking with the pass of the drafts that flit through the narrow and dingy corridors like unseen tenants. 

From the sounds of whoever is outside my door right now, they are not a small person. The floorboards don’t just creak - they _groan_ , heady with strain. I can feel the sound against my cheek through my lumpy mattress and each instance makes me want to scream. 

I am in bed, my bottle of whiskey hastily stuffed under my covers as my heart pounds hard enough to be visible through my protruding chest bones. My wounded hand throbs as I clench it into a fist, wide-eyed and waiting. I distantly wonder if the cut is infected, but that notion seems very inconsequential next to the fact that I might die at any moment. 

They’ve come for me. All my moping has painted a target on my back. 

Yet… No one knocks on the door. Better yet, no one _breaks_ it down, shining flashlights in my eyes and grabbing me by the hair to pull me to the floor. No one speaks out there and I don’t know whether to hyperventilate or faint altogether. How long were they standing there before I noticed? Did they hear the booze swishing in the bottle as I drank from it? 

It’s torture, this perilous waiting game. For one mad moment, I consider calling out to them but I clap a hand over my mouth before I can make good on that suicidal impulse. 

Then, there is a sound. Small and barely audible. 

A sigh. 

That sound fetches up under my door and my eyes widen with it, goosebumps riddling up my spine in a painful trail. I freeze, blinking rapidly at the door. The shadow moves and then there are footsteps walking away, thudding down the rickety steps. Then, on the main floor below, I hear the front door click as it closes. 

I desperately want to peer out my bedroom window to see who it is, but I can’t make myself move. I am stuck to stillness, my blood rushing in my ears and my body quivering violently. Life and death - all of it keeps flashing through my mind. I see my father executed in the park he used to take my brother and me to play in when we were still little and gleeful. I see my brother being rounded up with many others as the Enforcers stuff them into their vans and take them away. His name was Poe and my parents named him after the poet, Edgar Allan Poe. My father’s favourite. I see Rose, lying on the ground with the forest reflected in her sightless, unblinking eyes. 

I see myself, as I was the night they first brought me to the redemption camp. That camp’s name was Darnerfly and its cheery name, like all the other camps, could not have been more misleading. The nuns of Darnerfly shaved my head, deeming the long since faded blue dye a “whore’s colour” before they began their cycle of redemption. They ripped out the dermal piercing on my left hip and doused me with enough ketamine to convince me they were all the embodiments of Mary Magladone. 

I see myself as I am now. A shell. A liar. A Menial. 

And I see him, too. The Enforcer, his hair long and dark, flecked with silver and eyes brandy warm. I see what it might be like to care again. That I might care already. 

That is when I realize I want to live, after all.

*

The lunch rush has just passed. I make my way through the empty cafe, collecting trash for the dumpsters out back. There is still garbage collection here in the After, every Thursday morning at the crack of dawn. No recycling or compost, though I doubt Mother Nature is under nearly the same strain she was in the Before. After all, there are so few of us left that it has kind of levelled the playing field. 

In any case, I don’t know where the garbage ends up, only that it is taken away. And searched through, no doubt. The black bag in my hand swishes with each step and as I trundle through the kitchen, Josephine tells me she’s locking up the front and leaving for the day. She asks me to close up the back before I leave. 

We close early on Wednesdays so we can attend Confession. 

I already have mine ready to go. Minister, I confess that I can only work harder every day and not take my meagre life for granted. It is a good confession for a Menial, something right out of the redemption camps. 

I wear this shell well. 

I hear Josephine close the front door, the lock clicking into place. The cafe is silent and I pause by the stove, remembering my visitor from last night. The way the front door of my building closed with a click, rather than a bang, like the person was trying not to wake anyone up. 

But I am the only one who lives in my building. 

There were a group of nuns who stayed in the apartment below mine, but they have since packed up and headed for the lawless prairies to spread the good word of God (and to ensure His hammer is being used). It has only been me there for many months now. The other Menials live elsewhere in town, scattered in what used to be low-income apartments. 

Who, I wonder, was standing outside my apartment last night?

My thoughts automatically jump to the Enforcer and I feel my face flame before I have time to properly ward the thought away. I kind of want to slap myself upside the head for that foolishly hopeful thought. He has not returned to my village for almost two weeks. It was not him - it _couldn’t_ have been him. Why would he stand outside my door, for nearly an hour, and then leave? 

I almost laugh at myself but I steal a guilty glance around me, even though I know I am alone in the cafe. 

I’m at the back door, tying the bag in my hands, not looking where I’m going. I remember how Rose used to tut at me for not putting the garbage bags down on the floor, where their weight would be more easily supported, rather than fighting gravity and trying to tie them as I went.

That is why I almost scream when a hand clamps down on my arm. 

Before I can get a look at who has grabbed me, I am pulled the rest of the way into the harsh summer sunlight. There is a long moment when my brain tries to reconcile who I am seeing against what can only be reality. 

The Enforcer stares down at me, tall and imposing as ever. His hand is warm against my skin. The garbage bag swings with forward momentum, striking his legs and then mine. 

I am speechless, my mouth open and my eyes pried so wide that they start to water. 

“You…” Then, my teeth click together as I strangle the words before they can escape my mouth. I simply stand there and gape at him, realizing that he is really here, gripping my arm and wearing the same dusty leather jacket he always wears. 

He looks …the same. Absolutely the same. I don’t know why I expected any different.

“Are you going to church, after?” 

The Enforcer offers no hello or explanation over just where in the blue fuck he has been for the last fourteen days. And no warmth either. 

Suddenly, I am furious, but I’m smart enough to avert my gaze and stare at his boots before he catches on. From what little I did see, he looks cautious and I get that smell again off of him that makes me want to step away. Copper, sharp and cloying. I see no blood but I know it was on his hands today. That perhaps he just washed it off, mere moments ago. 

Why bother, I want to ask him. We both know it’s there even if the evidence is gone. 

“Yes,” I say finally. 

His hand flexes, applying just a little more pressure until I inadvertently look up at him again. This seems to be what he is waiting for. 

“There’s a shed, just behind your building.” The Enforcer stares down at me and the intensity in his gaze almost makes me look away again. “You’re going to go home after church and wait three hours. The sun will be down by then. Take the stairwell at the back of your building and keep quiet. Stay by the fence when you cross the yard and knock four times on the door when you get there. Tell no one, Jane.”

His hair is mussed and a little oily. I wonder if he gets to shower, where he lives. 

“I won’t tell anyone.” 

I think some of that anger must have escaped anyway because he does not move away, nor does he release my arm. He just stares at me, tracking the new changes my irritation adds to my face. I know exactly what he will find, too. My eyebrows squished together to form a deep vertical chasm where smooth skin once resided and my lips turned down, just enough to be noticeable, where little mountain peaks form at the corners. 

The Enforcer stares at my mouth the longest, with such rapt attention I can feel my face reddening under his regard. He must see how thin I am now, more so than before. He must feel the frailness of the little bird-bones of my wrist. It’s his fault, even if I know that isn’t really true. His hand has slackened its grip on me, the touch soft and familiar. 

I do not dare pull away. 

“Well… I must go now.” My voice is harder too, the _t_ of the word “most” sharpened and the _w_ of the word “now” elongated, like my anger has given my tongue whiplash. 

“Will you be there? Tonight?” 

The Enforcer sounds amused when he says it, although I can see no trace of any mirth on his face. 

I nod and he finally lets me go, stepping back so I can put the trash in the dumpster. 

“Just after sundown,” he repeats as I step past him for the cafe door. 

“I won’t forget.” 

We linger longer than is socially normal, watching one another, and then I turn for the cafe and close the door behind me. When I have caught my breath a few moments later, my cheeks hot and a small smile trying to creep its way across my face, I finally lock up and leave. The alleyway is empty, though I can still smell blood on the air. 

*

There were no less than five Enforcers at Confession tonight. I kept counting them while I waited my turn, my gaze returning over and over to the only Enforcer I really cared to see. 

And now I am waiting in my tiny kitchen, my palms sweating as I stare up at the clock on the wall. I hate that clock just like I hate the fucking drapes. It’s yellow, with big silver hands that chase each other in circles. I hate yellow, it’s too cheery, too…

I stop staring at the clock and gaze down at my hands like they’ve suddenly transformed into snakes. What the hell am I doing? Even if the Ministers have not discovered a way to read minds, I should not be thinking these thoughts. To think - to even _think_ the word “hate” in such a blaze way - why, I could slip. I could say that illegal word to the wrong person. I could…

My eyes dart back to the clock and I jump up from the ratty little chair at my ratty little kitchen table. All of it is aluminum, plain and functional. Just like me. But I don’t really care about self-loathing at the moment. It has been three hours and I am really going to do this. I am really going to go out to the shed and…What? What if the Enforcer is doing this to exercise power over me? Maybe he wants sex in return for his silence. Maybe he wants to arrest me, to trip me up the way I keep thinking he’s been trying this whole time…

I won’t know until I go out there. Right now, in this moment, I have never felt so alive. Never so fragile, never so mortal. 

I am out my apartment door and walking along the scummy corridor to the back stairwell before I can question this anymore. My heart is racing, defiant to the quiet way I creep down the stairs. My fingers tremble as I push open the back door of my apartment building. I am careful to leave the door propped open with a brick so I am not locked out for the night. I shiver with the cool night breeze, a gentle reprieve from the stifling summer heat. 

The shed is a dark shape at the back of the yard and I wish I could make my brittle nerves relax but every sound, every whisper of wind over the grass makes me startle and scamper across the yard faster. Then, I am at the small wooden door and my hand does not falter when I raise it to knock in four little raps that feel far too loud in the night air. 

The door opens right away, bathing me in soft candlelight. Brown eyes meet mine through the din and before my fear can gather me away, before I can rightly decide what I am feeling at all, his hand extends to me, through the threshold of the door. 

I stare down at his calloused fingers, and some quiet murmur of intuition tells me I would follow him to the ends of the earth if he asked me to. 

I don’t know this man. I don’t really understand him and I don’t know why I have trusted him thus far, being what he is and what I am. But if he held his hand out to me, like he is now, or if he told me to climb a hundred fucking fences, I would go. 

Not for love, or something so fleeting. For the life in his eyes. For the promise of it. 

The Enforcer, one of the world’s last executioners, holds his hand out to me under the cover of darkness. 

And I take it. 

*

The shed reeks of sawdust and candlewax. It is rectangular, about fifteen feet in length and maybe ten feet in width. There are two chairs on either side of a tiny red fold-up table, similar to my kitchen table. I am sitting on one side, while the other chair remains unoccupied for the moment. Sitting on the table is a deck of cards. 

I have not seen a deck of cards in over ten years. I stare at them as though I’ve never seen anything them before. 

In the corner, though, is the greatest travesty. An embodiment of such ghastly sin that would result in both of us being shot on the spot, nevermind the redemption camps. 

“Is that a _Linn Sondek_?” I ask, entirely unconcerned for the moment that the piece of machinery sitting on a stack of milk crates would be an instant death sentence if discovered. 

In response, I get a quirk of the lips from the Enforcer. He stands next to the machine, his hand paused over a modest pile of records at his side. He looks different in here, although I cannot immediately put a finger on why. Taller, even though he always seems that way to me. It’s so small in here that he takes up all the room, he and his shadow, cast in candlelight. 

“It is,” he says in that deep mid-western rumble of his, inclining his head towards me. 

“A _Linn Sondek LP 12_?” 

This time I sound less incredulous and more awestruck, like the Grand Minister himself is sitting atop those milk crates rather than what I recognize to be a vintage record player. 

“That’s correct.”

I stare up at the Enforcer from my seat, forgetting that such things are inappropriate. Since we closed the shed door behind us, I feel like I am in a dream. A _good_ dream that’s sure to end any second now because how in Mary Magdalene's left tit did the Enforcer get his hands on a vintage record player? How did that machine survive the purge, no less all the intervening years afterwards?

But this is not a question I should ask. 

“I have about a dozen records here. I was more into indie, so the selection is limited.” 

The Before is implied. It’s implied everywhere, here in the After. 

“I liked indie, too.” I say this as though we are speaking of a dearly departed friend. Then, I brighten up a bit, smiling appreciatively at the modest pile of records. “I liked pretty much everything except country music.”

The Enforcer laughs softly, the first time I have ever heard him do such a thing. 

I think I may want to hear him do it again, just so I can commit it to memory. His fingers tap the records in indecision. Then, with a flourish, he withdraws a record I do not recognize. Handling it with the care one might show their infant, he places the record on the player. New sounds enter the shed, though he is careful to keep the volume low. These are sounds I never thought I’d hear again. 

First, the unmistakable sound of a needle engaging with the record, a kind of “wur-unk” noise that is so analogous with days in my youth that I cannot breathe for a moment. The Enforcer sits across from me, folding his large frame into that small dinky chair. Only, for that first song we listen to together, he is no longer an Enforcer and I am no longer a Menial. We are two people, sitting in a shed that reeks of cedar, with a deck of cards between us and nothing else. Two people performing one of the oldest acts in human history. 

We are listening to music. 

Just sitting and listening for the simple pleasure of it. There are no prayers to be found here, no plastic homilies. This is not the Before or the After. In this shed, this is Nowhere and it’s beautiful in its nothingness, in its lack of duty or suspense. We are. Just that and nothing more. 

Then, the song begins. 

It’s a synthesizer that comes on first, playing four high notes that seem to twinkle together in a way that is retro enough to know the rhythm of. To predict where the song means to go. And then the acoustic begins and the song takes us somewhere else entirely. I don’t know the woman’s voice when she begins to sing. She’s soft enough not to commandeer the instruments entirely. The music moves the song and my foot is bopping along before I can think not to. 

I am instantly enthralled. 

When I meet his eyes from across the table, I think I smile but I am so lost to the music that I am not really certain I do anything. My face feels hot, my eyes warm with lost emotions. His eyes do the smiling for him, as they always do. Warm and bright, against the candlelight. The song ends a few minutes later and the record “wur-unks” on between the next song, filling out the long yawning silence between us. 

“Did you like it?” 

The Enforcer sounds gentle. Coaxing, as one would a skittish animal trapped in their yard. 

“I…” A dry croak leaves my lips, so I try again, clearing my throat. “I loved it.”

“Good.” He says it simply and it _is_ good. This, here, us. 

My previous fear has all but evaporated, although I am sure it will return later. Fear is alright. It is what has kept me alive all these years. 

“What game would you like to play?” 

The Enforcer picks up the cards and after a few poor fumbles with the deck, I wordlessly hold out my hand for them. He pauses like that and I realize why he looks different. He doesn’t have his holster on. His guns sit by the record player, carefully folded in the holster so as not to spill on the floor. 

I’ve never seen him without them before. 

The Enforcer hands the deck over to me and a rueful grin briefly surfaces on his face. It changes the topography of his entire face, and to everything else too. I am startled to stillness, afraid to blink lest it vanish, like a mere hallucination brought on by the power of the music and the strangeness of this little shed. The sharp angles of his face soften, the corners of his eyes crinkling and he looks five years younger. Almost boyish. 

“My hands are too big,” he offers, like an apology. “Always been so damn clumsy with them.”

“Not when you’re shooting those guns, though.” 

I have no idea where that comes from and while I don’t mean it as an insult, I can see what it does to him. How his shoulders tighten like bolts. 

“No. Not then,” he agrees quietly. His smile is gone and I’m sorry for that. 

“Crazy Eights.” It comes out of my mouth like a soft expletive and he tilts his head in confusion. “Let’s play Crazy Eights. I’ll shuffle and you deal.”

“Okay.” 

When the record ends later on, I ask him to put it on again. While the smile I get is nothing compared to the first, I file it away in my memory to replay in bed that night, as one might take out some found treasure and admire its beauty.


	5. Something Can Grow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The door to the cafe opens, the still air temporarily disturbed as I cross the cafe to the coffee pots behind the counter. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Enforcer. He’s not alone today. The other Enforcers come in with him, all five of them. They each wear their long dusty coats and carry their oiled holsters with their large, gleaming guns.
> 
> Everything in the cafe stops. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my fave chapters to write so far. Loves me some tension. 
> 
> Warning ahead for unwanted touching. 
> 
> Image: maureen2musing on Tumblr

It has not rained for seven days. I only know this because it’s all the regulars want to talk about. How they’re afraid of drought, like the one we had six years ago when most of the crops failed and the Harvest Festival was nearly cancelled. 

I nod politely at this idle chatter, pouring coffee and slinging plates of waffles and eggs. It’s hot out and the cafe is fetid with the scent of sweat and sour body odour. I’m glad I showered this morning. I hate the smell of sweat, and how it permeates in my clothing. The laundromat assigned to the Menials is always crowded when I am permitted to go. 

I hate crowds, too. 

That was always a joke between Rose and me. How I would be assigned to festivals and concerts and parades, and how I hated being crammed in there with hundreds of people. 

_You signed up for this,_ she would tell me. _I have no sympathy for you._

As I fill up more coffee mugs and go to the next table, I hum the song from last night in my head, careful not to do so out loud. I think about the Enforcer’s smile and how clumsy he was trying to shuffle cards. How we spoke about nothing at all and merely played cards and listened to music. At the end of it, he had blown out the candle and locked the shed up. We did not dare even whisper goodbye, simply nodding at one another before he exited the yard through the gate in the fence and I went back up to my apartment. Quiet as death, in that dark yard. He did not say if and when we would meet in the shed again and I did not dare ask. 

I come to a table of Peons and wordlessly refill their mugs. 

“I know why it hasn’t rained,” Jeffrey says to the men sitting at his table. They work in the mines, their fingernails permanently blackened. “It’s because of the Ultimate Enemies, I say. All because of the attack a few weeks ago. Once they’re caught, we’ll have our rain back again.”

“You think so?” another says. I think his name is John, like the man who died with his blood staining the cafe floors. There are a lot of Johns in this village. 

The door to the cafe opens, the still air temporarily disturbed as I cross the cafe to the coffee pots behind the counter. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Enforcer. 

He’s not alone today. The other Enforcers come in with him, all five of them. They each wear their long dusty coats and carry their oiled holsters with their large, gleaming guns.

Everything in the cafe stops. 

The Enforcer, who I am only starting to know, does not so much as glance my way. He does not sit in his regular spot either. He sits at a table at the other end of the cafe with his Brothers in tow. They pile into their seats, their jackets hanging off their chairs and their guns on full display. None of them seems to notice the taut silence in the cafe or the averted gazes of those closest to them. 

I am not so fortunate. I cannot ignore them or leave. 

I go to their table even though several people are already waiting on their orders. We all know who will be getting served first and no one will dare complain. I peek down at my sleeves to ensure there is no ink showing and that my arms are properly covered. 

When I reach the table, I say nothing. I wait. My ribs feel like they’re going to crack with how hard my heart is beating. 

“Five coffees, cream and sugar on the side,” my Enforcer says without looking at me. He looks tired, I note. His hair is still wet from a shower and he smells like mint. 

I try not to look at him at all. Everything feels dangerous right now. 

“And I want some eggs,” another Enforcer interjects. He has greasy red hair, slicked back in a loose ponytail and a thick, nasally English accent. He smells like he had a passing acquaintance with soap, perhaps a decade ago. His teeth are not much better. 

I go to turn away to get their order ready, when his hand snaps out and grabs my arm. 

I don’t make a sound, my head bowed subserviently. My sleeve has ridden up a little in his grasp, but he is not looking at my arm. The indentations from his fingers are bound to leave bruises, yet meanwhile, he is tilting his head, taking care to capture my eyes with his. 

“I want the eggs runny, Menial. So I can dip my toast in them. If they come overcooked, I won’t be too pleased.” 

He says this conversationally, but by the grip of his hand on my arm, I understand the implication all too well. 

My Enforcer’s reaction is hard to see at this angle and I know better than to get a better look at him. The others do nothing, of course. This is business as usual to them. My Enforcer, though, is a dark form in the corner of my eye, casually leaned back in his seat. What I can see is his hand, ever so slightly, resting on the butt of his gun. 

It was not there before. 

The red-headed Enforcer sees it too and he releases me immediately. 

I trod the familiar path between tables and come to the kitchen. Josephine is the cook today and I tell her exactly how the eggs should be cooked. 

“How many?” She stinks of cigarettes and I wonder if she’s been chain-smoking out back again. 

“He didn’t say.” I shake out the pain in my arm. That Enforcer grabbed me so hard, my skin is white where his fingers were. It won’t stay white for long. 

I peek out at the cafe and spot the Enforcers at their table, speaking in low mutters. My Enforcer speaks very little, his posture deceptively relaxed. I think there is a hierarchy amongst them that I was not privy to before. My Enforcer might be at the top of it, though whether that is due to experience, skill, or some secret appointment, I do not know. I do not think it would help my chances to know, either way. 

There are four of them, after all. He can’t be that good of a shot. 

“Well, how many should I make?” Josephine asks again and I pry myself away from my peeking and stare down at her incredulously. She’s maybe five feet tall and has a stooped back. I am not tall myself, but she makes me look gigantic in comparison. 

“Better do four, to be safe. And toast too, Josie. Don’t burn it this time.” I whisper this and she nods at me like I’m a bothersome fly, so I leave her to her cooking.

I gather the coffee, creams, and sugar for their table, and as I enter the main area of the cafe, I notice it has cleared out considerably. I do not know if I am relieved by this or not. My scalp itches from the heat, but I ignore it, far too focused on getting the Enforcers their coffee and not getting my head blown off.

The redhead is looking at me again when I return. I can feel his greasy eyes all over me the whole time, flitting over my frame, as slight as it is. 

The others disregard me completely, continuing their muttered conversation. 

“They said east. Past the cattle farm, right?” one of the Enforcers says. He’s a Black man, his hair kept short and neat, and his stubble speckled with fine white hairs that gleam in the harsh sunlight spilling from the window. I notice that his eyes are a brilliant shade of green and quickly avert my gaze, as I did with my Enforcer the first day I met him. 

I shouldn't be noting _any_ details about these dangerous men. I should give them their coffee and stay the fuck out of their way. 

“That’s what one of the Peons mentioned yesterday. Joseph, I think his name was,” my Enforcer replies, accepting his coffee without a word to me. 

I don’t look at him either, careful in my spacing around him. 

I wonder if he’s as scared as I am right now. In the Before, I oversaw drug raids, I arrested hostile suspects, and I was the first officer on the scene when a man murdered his wife and children in a fit of rage. I am more scared now than I ever was in those situations and I realize it’s because I am scared for _both_ of us. 

What if they discover what we are doing? What if they kill him and leave his body out in the street like they did with that woman? What if they do that to both of us?

I force these thoughts away. Coffee. Eggs. Then they’ll leave. Fuck I hope they leave soon. 

Lastly, I bring the redheaded Enforcer his coffee. He is still staring at me and now the others have begun to notice as well. I go to leave and he grabs my arms again, in the exact same spot as before. 

I know this kind of man quite well. These types of men are the ones who like to grab hard enough to leave bruises. They’re the ones who seek out their manhood amongst battered women, who end up in the back of a cruiser while their dead family cools in their own blood. I’ve seen these types of men many times. I’ve seen them Before and I’ve seen them After.

It comes back to me; the self-defence method for when a man has you by your arm. 

_The eyes and the balls, ladies,_ our instructor had told us, all those years ago in the back of a gymnasium. I briefly wonder if that instructor survived the Resurgemus and instantly doubt it. She was a battleaxe. A true feminist pioneer. 

And here I am, wearing my grey cardigan when it’s a hundred fucking degrees outside and shivering like a dumb lamb before the slaughter. My cotton skirt feels like it’s pasted onto my legs. I want to lash out at this beady-eyed shitweasel. I want to yank my arm from that crushing grip, poke out his fucking eyes and twist his balls until he screams like a twelve-year-old girl. 

I do none of these things. 

“Haven’t seen you at church, little Menial,” the redhead says. His gaze is heavy on me, like another layer of clothing to add to this choking heat. Oppressive and sticky. 

“She was there yesterday,” the Black Enforcer mutters airily. He sounds supremely bored and a little irritated. This one likes to get his work done. He does not like distractions. I can see his jaw clenching from here. “And the Wednesday before, and so on.”

“Was she now?” 

I think the redhead might be smirking now, in that lecherous way some men do. My father once told me that men do not mean to look that way, it is simply bred into their DNA. I never really ascribed to that philosophy myself. All I know is that my fingernails are itching to dig into this fucker's eyeballs. 

“I think I would have remembered this little waif.”

I cannot see my Enforcer. I am angled away from him and I think it’s better that way. This is humiliating, my reduction to a thing and my Enforcer’s reduction to a spectator. I cannot decide who it’s worse for. 

“Are you going to take the night patrol again?” the Black Enforcer says without missing a beat. He has a map of the village unfolded in front of him and it’s covered in an assortment of symbols, each done up in red marker. 

“I’ll take it for the next few weeks.” My ears perk at hearing my Enforcer speak. He sounds the same. Unaffected, plain. “And Mark, you’re going out to the western foothills. There’s a patrol set up there and I want you on lookout.”

The redhead - Mark, I suppose his name is - looks away from me, his grip slackening. Either way, I am a prisoner, whether the cage of his hand is tight or not. 

“Oh, I am, am I?” Mark sounds angry. 

All the hairs on my body stand on end. 

“Yes Mark, you are.” My Enforcer’s voice has gone eerily soft. His syllables are inflexible, his mid-western drawl hardly discernible. “Take Matthew with you, too. We don’t need five of us here for this little watering hole. Three will do just fine and if they come back, we’re ready for them this time.” 

The redheaded Enforcer - Mark - glances back at me and his smirk returns. He’s still angry. I can tell because his grip has become excruciatingly tight. I try not to react but I think I must wince because his nasty little grin widens. His eggs must be ready by now, though I know he is not really hungry for them. I know what he wants. 

“Might want to stick around. Winterbourne has some nice local flavour.” 

His knuckles crack as his fingers squeeze. I begin to lose the feeling in my fingers and there are tears in my eyes, yet still, I refuse to react. Maybe that’s all he wants. To see me cry and plead for release. I don’t do anything. I don’t even breathe. 

“You know the rules, Mark. Menials are off-limits,” the Black Enforcer says, still not looking at him. The others do not like Mark. I can feel it off them the same way I feel this unbearable summer heat. They lean away from him, as though his unpleasant body odour might catch onto them like disease. 

I cannot say I blame them. 

“Well, I don’t -”

“I said you’re going west and that’s the final word. You can head back to the barracks and pack up right now.” He’s harsh, my Enforcer, yet somehow his voice still sounds as cool as a duck pond. 

Mark yanks on my arm, twisting me closer to him. My shoulder gives an agonizing twinge in its socket and I silently pray he doesn’t dislocate it. Now I can see my Enforcer and my vision nearly blurs, the tears close and heady. His eyes are no longer brown; they’re so dark it’s like looking into twin eclipses. His gaze has not drifted away from Mark’s and I cannot help but wonder what will happen if he does look away. That if his gaze strays, perhaps to Mark’s tightly clutched hand on my arm, he might snap. 

I find myself almost wishing for it.

The Black Enforcer crosses his arms and turns to face Mark as well, his expression plain and expectant. The other two do the same and I am left standing at Mark’s side, with painful pins and needles in my hand and his grasp on me like a hot brand. 

I am ignored, yet I am the cause of this diversion. It’s an odd juxtaposition. 

The moment finally breaks when Josephine comes out of the kitchen with the plate of eggs. She primly ignores the other patrons gawking over at this table, she ignores the Enforcers glaring daggers at each other and instead looks up at me with such practised nullity that I can hardly recognize her. The plate of eggs thuds against the table, right in front of Mark. He does not move to touch them, his hand holding me in place. I can feel his breath heating against my ribs and I want to puke. 

But Josephine has not left. She turns to me and is it a trick of the light, or has her posture straightened in the last twenty seconds?

“Jacob needs you to go to the market and pick up some supplies. He left the list in the kitchen for you,” Josephine says. Perfect diction, not a hint of phlegm in her voice. 

I can only blink down at her with stupefaction. 

“She’s staying right here,” Mark growls, his voice like metal against metal. 

“No, she isn’t.” 

There is a small metallic clicking sound and I cannot help but look then. My Enforcer has not drawn his gun, but his hand is resting against it again. I know that sound, of course. I could identify it in my sleep.

The safety was just disengaged on his gun. 

Three more clicks follow it and I know that the other Enforcers have followed suit. None of them have taken their eyes off Mark. 

Josephine does not react at all. She simply repeats her words to me in the same flawlessly vanilla tone. I nod at her, waiting like everyone else in the cafe to either be released or to be shot in the crossfire of bullets about to go off at any second. 

Finally, Mark pulls in a deep, disgusted sigh. 

“Fine, Thomas. Seeing as you’re the Paragon,” he says that about as respectfully as he spoke to Josephine a few seconds ago. 

My spine prickles. _Thomas._ The name is not what I expected, but then I remember that no names are real names anymore. They mean nothing. It’s our stations that define us now. 

“Go,” my Enforcer murmurs coldly. “Right now, Mark.” 

He has that rasp some men get to their voices when they’re in that tenuous borderland between displeasure and outright fury. My father had it too, on the rare occasions he got cross with my brother and I. 

I find myself weakly homesick for one brief, insane instant before I find myself right where I was before; in some sickening in-between of self-loathing and terror. 

Mark goes to speak again, but the words never come to fruition because my Enforcer is already speaking over him. 

“And don’t come back or I’ll have a chat with the Ministers that you’ve been sniffing around Menials again. They might take more than your Paragon title from you next time.”

The threat is there and so are my Enforcer’s eyes, black as night and fixed on Mark. If I was the one under that horrible glare, I might have shit myself already. 

“Come now, Mark. Let’s go.” One of the other Enforcers stands, the one who must be named Matthew, and then my arm is finally released. 

I hear them move around, preparing to leave but I have already turned away. I do not feel any relief. My guts are too tied together in fear. Body as stiff as a board, I walk with Josephine to the kitchen. I don’t look back at the table and I try not to cry out at the feeling of blood returning to my hand. My arm is throbbing horribly. I don’t think I will be able to lift any more plates today. 

We reach the kitchen and I think I am doing remarkably well. I am not blubbering, I have not let a single tear fall. I wince through the pain but don’t utter a sound.

It is not until I ask Josephine for the list that I realize how wrong my voice sounds. The words come out with the coherence of an intoxicated barfly. 

“There isn’t a list.” Josephine shrugs at the horrified look on my face with a defiance that leaves me speechless. Her back is slumped once more and her hand trembles when she reaches for the pack of cigarettes she keeps under the sugar jar. “That beast hurt you bad, kiddo?”

I sway on the spot. No one has called me kiddo since I was really young. Josephine lied for me. Lied. For me. To Enforcers. I don’t know whether to burst into tears or hug her so I do neither. 

“It’s nothing.” Those are dull words, lisped through the pain greying out my vision around the edges. I just need a minute. Just a minute to gather my wits. “Can you do the tables for ten minutes?”

“Sure.” Josephine inhales her cigarette deeply and then offers the rest to me. I stare at it and shake my head. She nods, like she expected nothing less and then she’s gone back out to the cafe.

I stand in the kitchen, not daring to touch my arm. The pain is terrible, but I’ve had worse. I just have to put it away. The steel wool they used on me was much worse and I managed to put that away, after a while. I turn to the back door, robotic in motions, and make it outside. The sun is shining on the other side of the building so I have some shade at least. I go to the fence that I climbed a short time ago and press my face against the cool metal chain links. I would kill for some ice, but the machine has been broken for years now. 

There is a sound behind me, a bootheel scraping against pavement and I whirl around so quickly, I almost fall over in a wave of sudden dizziness. My Enforcer stands not ten feet away. He’s quiet when he wants to be, but then again, his kind are a breed of silence unto themselves, the only sound of their passage is the shots from their guns. 

After a few seconds, I realize that his hand is outstretched to me, paused between us. We are alone in the alley. 

“Are they gone?” I sound the same as always. Perhaps a little breathless. The heat is stifling but at least it's a dry heat. I hate humidity. 

“They’re gone. He won’t be coming back again. And if he does…” My Enforcer does not finish his sentence. His words are not boastful or bursting with reassurances. He speaks of them simply, as a fact of life. His guns look heavy on his hips and I once again muse over their impracticality. 

“Were you going to kill him if he refused you?” 

“Yes.” He does not appear to mind my directness. His hand is still reaching towards me and while it drops a few inches, he does not pull away. “Mark is a piece of shit but I didn’t know he was going to do that. If I had…”

“What, you would have made a scene in the middle of the cafe with everyone watching?” I am brazen. I am heartless. I don’t care. Not now, with the sheen of humiliation drying on my skin. “You couldn’t and I couldn’t either. That’s just the way it is for people like me.” 

I want to walk away. But there’s a fence behind me and he’s blocking the only way out. 

“I wanted to kill him. I still do.” My Enforcer looks at the other end of the alley and then back to me, just as maddeningly practical as ever. 

I don’t know what to say to that so I turn away from him to nudge a cigarette butt with my shoe. Josephine needs to get better at hiding her misdeeds. 

“Your name is Thomas.” I laugh as I say it although I am not overly amused. I can feel that vertical line between my eyebrows again. I can feel the anger heating my cheeks. The sheer embarrassment. I remember telling guys like Mark to fuck off in college, in all those dive bars and clubs, with Rose hanging off my arm and eating up every moment of my casual impunity. I remember the easy confidence I had behind a badge and years worth of self-defence training. 

Now, I have nothing now but a chain-smoking old woman to protect me against the wolves of this awful new world. 

“Ben.” His voice is paper-thin, hardly a summer breeze. 

I rub at my arm, forgetting myself and hiss between my teeth at the immediate pain. His gaze drops to it and I am relieved to see his eyes are light again. 

“What?” 

I forget this is not a question I am allowed to ask. He makes me forget these things and I find myself getting angrier. With him, after all, but mostly with myself. 

My Enforcer creeps closer, his hand closing gently over my wrist. His eyes hold mine, asking for silent permission. When I say nothing, he carefully tugs my sleeve up my arm. The ink he spotted the first time we met is revealed but he does not comment on it. He turns my arm over in his grasp, his jaw tight as he looks down at the blooming bruises on my skin. Black, except where the ink distorts them. 

His fingers seem twice as wide in comparison to the ones imprinted into my arm, his hands large enough to dwarf Mark’s two-fold. He could crush his face, if he wanted, with just his hand. 

The thought brings me great joy. 

“My name is Ben,” he murmurs as he examines my arm. 

Suddenly, I forget to be mad.

“That was my name Before. And now, too.” My Enforcer still will not look at me, his eyes fixed on those bruises. He is so close that if I lean forward, my head will clip his chin. “Well, it could be. If you want it to.”

If I want it to… Like I was not the one with my arm being gripped to the point of bone-crushing by one of his Brothers. Like I am not a Menial, or a woman, or some object available to be tormented with. My Enforcer is looking at me by the time I pick my jaw up from the ground. My arm still hurts like hell, I cannot even move my fingers without bright agony lancing up to my shoulder, but I am distracted. 

There is proximity. There are _names_. Laws of the Lord, shattered at our feet. 

“Tell me what to call you. Outside of here.” He looks down at me and I feel like his gaze blows right through me, past the chain-link fence and into some land beyond. To a place that does not exist for us because there is no Outside. Not for us. 

Or, at least, there shouldn’t be. 

“Rachel,” I say and it is like some stranger is using my mouth to speak because that name, that _dead-gone-lost_ name, should not be coming out of my mouth. They beat it out of me, carved it from my soul at Darnerfly. That person is gone, along with everyone else from Before… But I think I can hear her speaking through me now, using me as a vessel. 

My little reflection, coming to life. 

“Rachel.” My Enforcer moves his mouth around it as though he’s tasting a fine wine. He is ever so solemn, My Enforcer. Ever so care-worn in melancholy. Only his eyes are warm again. Cautious in joy. 

“Rey. I preferred Rey, Before,” I amend. Or _she_ amends. I can’t credit this conviction, this soft-spoken transgression. Maybe it’s been my reflection all along, creeping her way out of the mirror and into my soul. Stealing the light and hiding it away within me. 

“Then that is what I will call you - Rey.” 

Then, my Enforcer smiles and it’s beautiful, that smile. It’s life and heartbreak all in one. Tremulous, displaying white and slightly crooked teeth. 

I might smile back, awash in hesitancy. 

“I have to get back to my tables. Before someone notices.”

“Yes.” He is still smiling, only it’s softer now. He rolls down my sleeve and his fingers slide down to mine, gently squeezing before letting go. “Come to the shed tonight. Same time. Four knocks, just like before.”

I should say no. I shouldn’t risk any more than I already have. 

“Okay,” I say instead, just like I knew I was going to. 

To the ends of the earth, I think again and I know. I _know_. 

We step away from each other, our orbits snapping apart before we collide. I move to the door, but his voice catches me again before I leave and I turn back to him, that hesitant smile returning for an instant. 

My Enforcer asks, “Are foxes your favourite animal?”

I am reminded of fourth grade, when such questions were how you got to know the other children. When your currency for making friends was liking the same colours and the same animals. I glance down at my arm to find an inked paw poking out from beneath my sleeve, outlined in black. Orange and red ink fill the spaces between and I pull my sleeve down to conceal it. 

“They’re Rey’s favourite,” I say and then, because I’m feeling bold, “See you later, Ben.”

His answering smile is tattooed on my eyelids for the rest of the afternoon and it’s only when Josephine and I have closed the cafe that I realized I’ve begun to think of him as my Enforcer. 

There is no “the” that stands before friend.


	6. Birds of a Feather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hold his fate in my palm. This tiny little square of destiny. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we're back!!!! Woot! 
> 
> This chapter just came along today and hooked me by the nostrils. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it <3

I guard my letters like a jealous lover, taking care to keep the small plank of wood turned away from his ever observant gaze. 

We are war generals, he and I, presiding over our respective plots of territory. Everything is open, everything is ripe for the taking. Each placement is intricate, woven into an ongoing battle for dominance. The letters are our weapons, our barricades against the gnawing chill of bitter defeat. 

I don’t think I’ve ever played a more intense game of Scrabble in my life. 

Frank Sinatra croons about New York City from the record player, albeit quietly, and it almost feels like we should be smoking cigars and sipping from crystal tumblers in a swanky Brooklyn billiards bar. The shed smells as cedary as always, but somehow our locale and all its fine perks has faded into the backdrop. We could be here, in a tiny village on the edge of nowhere, in the husked out ruins of Las Vegas, or sitting on top of Eiffel Tower. 

I don’t think we would notice either way. We are far too consumed with watching one another that reality, and all its dull depravity, has ceased to exist. 

He regards me with a blandness I am beginning to learn is fake. Really, the lax lines of his face are a mask, intricately constructed to conceal the fact that he is watching me as avidly as a hawk watches a lone rabbit hopping its way out of its den. His body turned slightly to the left and his legs outstretched under the table, ankles crossed. He is invading my personal space but neither of us have acknowledged it. It doesn’t feel aggressive or hostile, despite the battle of wills happening topside of the table. 

If anything, it’s comfortable. 

Comfort is dangerous, but then again, so is being out past curfew in a secret shed we use to rendezvous to play outlawed music and play outlawed board games. Somehow, I’ve started overlooking that danger and while I am fully aware of the stupidity of this - of sheer suicidal _insanity_ of it - I can’t seem to help myself anymore than he can. 

I shift my jaw from side to side, evaluating my options. I have a Q and Z, which normally indicates several rounds of being stuck with high value letters that are nearly impossible to play, but tonight I am feeling a little lucky. Perhaps a little cocky as well. 

I put the “Q” on the board first, making a show of straightening the tiny wooden block so it sits perfectly in the square. 

He doesn’t react. Not even a twitch of the eye, but I already know his tells just as well as he knows mine. It’s a small thing, something no one would notice unless they have spent time in his (mostly) unguarded company. Which is to say that no one, aside from me, has seen him like this in a very long time. 

His left shoulder always comes up, ever so slightly, when I am about to absolutely obliterate him in a game. It doesn’t happen often - he is not who he is and what he is for no reason, so he can usually spot me plotting from a mile off - but when it does, I cannot help but relish that tiny little shoulder raise like he has bowed down before my feet with a white flag of surrender. 

He thinks I am going to play the word “quiz”, which is a perfectly acceptable word and worth twenty-two points all its own without any additional letter or word scores. 

I have something better in mind. 

When I place an “E” after a “U”, I see something miraculous. His brow furrows, ever so slightly. When I add the letter “T”, the delicate arch of his cheek scrunches with the narrowing of his eyes. My fingers are steadier than they have been in a long time when I pick up the fifth letter and bring it before my eyes, considering it the way a person of much more refinery would a rare vintage of wine. I savour the way his body tightens across the table, his head tilted now as though listening for the victorious thrum of my pulse. 

I hold his fate in my palm. This tiny little square of destiny. 

His jaw shifts and my lips curve into a languid smirk that borders on outright cheekiness. I bring the tile down with unhurried deliberateness, never once taking my eyes off his. I am too smug to feel sheepish or unsure, too full of some long-lost sense of confidence, of _power,_ to pause over practiced insecurities. 

He holds my gaze in turn, his lips parting on an exhale. The intensity of his brown eyes, so dark in the weak candlelight, makes my cheeks pinken and the freckles on my chest flush red. He must notice because his eyes dart down to watch the scant inch of bared skin change under his rapt gaze. His eyes darken further. 

I bring the tile down on the board and he blows out a hard breath. 

“Z”. That single tile is worth ten points all on its lonesome. But that little Z has brought six other friends along and it’s here to clean house. And clean house it has. 

“Your move.”

His heated gaze snaps to mine and it’s like electricity to water; he takes in my careful satisfaction, his pupils blown wide and his lips pressing together in a lush line. If he is angry about his demise he does not show it. Rather, he looks _pleased_ if anything, like he is the one who really won here. Like the whole point of this game was to draw this creature out of me, this person whose cheeks are pink with triumph and whose eyes twinkle like polished stones. 

He taps his plank with his index finger and makes a sound then, somewhere between a sigh and a self-deprecating chuckle. He could play his letters, but we both know I’ve already won. My entire plank is empty and there are no more letters left in the bag. 

“I suppose I could accuse you of cheating.”

I grin and if it’s a little shark-like, he doesn’t comment on it. 

“I suppose you could.”

His smile doesn’t quite fade; it changes as though to match my own rapacious edge. His jaw is doing that thing again, shifting from side to side as he considers me. He taps his finger on his plank and then surprises me by knocking it over with a curl of his finger, the letters falling face down before him. 

“I’m fresh out of dictionaries. Guess it’s your lucky night.”

As we stare down at the word I’ve formed, like it’s the terms for his surrender, his fixed intensity transforms into a disbelieving grin. I can’t help but feel like something got away from me there, despite my victory. That deep, dark and lovely captivation has been tucked away, out of sight. Behind that careful mask we all must wear. 

I let the moment fade as well-worn uncertainty steals over me once more. I don’t really know what came over me there, even if that’s only half-true. I pick up the letters from the board and let out a rueful giggle, the pinkness in my cheeks remaining like a stubborn stain. 

“Well, that’s one game against your - what - fifteen that you’ve won in a row?”

“Thirteen.” Ben shrugs when I look up at him again and I am a little shocked to see that intensity has not left his eyes after all, even if he is dressing up with a playful grin. “But who’s counting right?”

“Right,” I murmur, shaking my head and laughing some more, though I take care to keep my voice down. It’s late. Really late. I ought to head back to my apartment soon. 

“Are you going to tell me what it means, Rey?”

This time, I go still when I peer up at him. My fingers hover the wooden tiles and I feel pinned under the weight of his regard. Pinned, like the rabbit is right before the instant the hawk scoops it up in its talons. 

I think this question is still about the game, though his voice has turned into something quiet and a little husky, like he asked me something much more personal. He likes to say my name. I noticed it almost right away. In the weeks since the incident with that other horrid Enforcer in the cafe, he says it as often as possible. But only here, in this tiny shed. Conversely, I hardly utter his name at all, though whenever I do, I notice the way his eyes soften and warm. 

Perhaps due to the scarcity of my familiarity. 

“It’s a bird.”

I don’t know why I am whispering. We never speak beyond tepid murmurs, but there is a hush in my blood now. A stillness to the way I reply to his casual subversion. I still haven’t picked up the tiles and when he reaches across the table, I think for one shocked moment that he means to take my hand. 

Instead, he reaches for the last word I put down and pushes the tiles around a little. My hands drop into my lap, where they are safe from the unpredictability of this moment and from my own unknown impulses. 

“A quetzal is a bird.”

It’s not really a question. I answer him anyway. 

“They’re from South America. Though there is a species that lives in the southern States.”

Well, in what _used_ to be the southern states. Most of what was once Florida, Louisiana and Alabama are underwater now, and whatever land is left has been divided up into territories chartered by the Ministers and patrolled by Enforcers. 

There are no states anymore. 

“They have green and red feathers.” I don’t know why I keep talking and telling him shit he probably doesn’t care about. He’s never seen a quetzal and he probably never will. But he doesn’t interrupt me either so I keep going. “They’re small. Not much bigger than a dove.”

“You know a lot about quetzals.” 

He isn’t making fun of me, yet I blush anyway. He withdraws his hand, eyes flitting across the rosy plains of my face in a way that makes it hard to look him in the eye. 

“I like animals.” I shrug when I say it, leaving that one word on the board between us. 

“I know,” he murmurs and there is a fondness to his tone now that I have absolutely no idea what to do with. “Are they your favourite?”

I remember telling him about the fox and I breathe a laugh. 

“Starlings are my favourite. Quetzal was just the best word I had to kick your ass with.”

We stare at each other for one long second and burst into laughter. We have to staunch the sound of it into our arms, but it feels good anyways. We don’t laugh a lot. Our shared joy is still tentative. A youngling barely hatched. 

But sometimes we laugh and it’s good, I decide. It’s good to hear his deep laughter even if it is constrained. 

Later, once the shed is closed for the night, we part ways at the fence as we usually do. We don’t say a word in case anyone can hear us, but when he looks back at me with his face hidden in the shadows, I cannot help but smile just a little. 

Just enough that he can see it. 

*

It’s almost fall. I can feel it in the air, at night especially. Winter gnawing its teeth into my skin and reminding me to mend my winter coat before the first snow falls. Even though there aren’t many trees in Winterbourne, the few we do have are starting to go red and orange. Flat and dry, the gently sloping hills surrounding this tiny patch of shepherds provide no cover from the harsh winter winds and no quarter from the sweltering summer sun. 

I hate this place. 

I’ve always known it, I just never fully acknowledged that hatred because it is forbidden. Especially for menials. But it’s there, now. It’s sharpened edge has dulled over the years and though I have cause not to wilt before my mirror anymore, though the reflection and I feel safer than we have any right to, I resent this place more than I ever have. 

Ben and I cannot _be_ Ben and I. 

He is the Enforcer as soon as we step out into the world beyond the shed’s door and I am a menial. We are separate entities from separate worlds. Unmoored by the knowledge we share, by our friendship. By the tenuous frivolities of our evenings in cedar and weak candlelight. 

My name is Jane out here, though no one ever really uses it. 

His name is Thomas and he is a Paragon, a leader amongst the Enforcers. A killer carrying out God’s mysterious plan. 

I resent the pretenses. I resent that I cannot walk up to him and tell him about how I saw two pigeons fighting over a piece of bread this morning. I resent that I have to look at his arm or shoulder, or better yet, at the floor and cannot decide what shade of brown his eyes are today. 

I wonder if Ben resents it as much as I do. 

*

“How are your mittens, Jane?” 

“They’re fine. Might need a new pair next year.”

“You just let me know. I’ll knit you some.”

I privately muse that I will not be asking Josephine to knit anything for me. She means well, but everything ends up reeking of cigarettes and if one of the Ministers smells that on me, I’ll be in big trouble. 

I turn the tap off and wipe my hands on one of the dishrags hanging over the handle of the stove. Josephine hates doing dishes at the end of the day so I always do them for her. She stands by the backdoor, smoking away and talking at me about this, that and the other thing, and I do the dishes, nodding in the right spots and softly answering her if she happens to ask my opinion. 

Which isn’t very often. 

It took me a long time to get used to people standing behind me. The redemption camps took care of this old tick - there was always a nun hovering over me, always a pair of watchful eyes disparaging in the habits of my old life. 

“...was looking at you a lot tonight. He looks at you a lot most nights, but I -”

Every muscle in my body locks together at once and when I turn around, I can shake the nerves from my voice. 

“What?”

Josephine squints at me, clearly not expecting to be interrupted. 

“The Enforcer. He was staring at you while you were waiting the tables. He tried to be sneaky about it, but I saw.”

Oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, _fuck_. 

“Well… that’s weird.” 

God, is that the best I can come up with? I am so fucked. We’re _both_ so fucked. 

“I wouldn’t worry too much dear.” Josephine closes the back door and comes to me to place a placating hand on my arm. The bruises from the other Enforcer have finally faded away, but there is still a faint yellow mark where his fingers dug into my skin. “If he wanted to arrest you, I warrant he would have done it by now. He’s probably just lonely. He’s been coming in here for what - months now? Never see him talking to anyone except his brothers. Good looking fellow like that could have any pick of the litter he wants, but not with those guns on his hips. He’s married to God now. The good Lord might turn the other cheek if he takes to his hand, though. And if he’s thinking about a skinny little menial who pours his coffee everyday when he does it, there ain’t no harm to that. As long as he isn’t taking after you - he isn’t, is he?”

I am staring at Josephine in pure, mortified amazement by the end of this impromptu speech. She raises her eyebrows at me and I choke on my spit. 

“No!” I exclaim when I realize what exactly she is asking me. In a much quieter voice, I say, “No, no. Never.”

 _...if he takes to his hand, though_. 

Nope. Nope, nope, _nope_ . I do not need to think about that. Not when people are already noticing him staring at me. Not _ever._ If hating this miserable village is dangerous, then thinking about an Enforcer _taking to his hand_ is downright lunacy. 

Josephine regards me for a second longer and then nods. “Well, good. At least that Enforcer has some humanity left in him.”

“Right… well. I’m going to lock up. You can head out if you want.”

When did it get so dry in here? Jesus-jumping-Christ I need to get home. 

“That sounds swell, Jane. I’ll see you at Confession tomorrow.”

“Kay.”

I stay right where I am until Josephine closes the front door and locks it behind her. Then, as though the devil is nipping at my heels, I rip off my apron, turn out the lights and practically flee out the back door, hardly having the presence of mind to lock it behind me. 

I walk straight home, staring at the ground as I go. It’s already dark out - the days are getting shorter and I pull my cardigan tighter around me, shivering. I feel like I am being watched, that every window I pass has eyes staring out at me. Paranoia keeps my pace quick as I cross town and finally get to my building. 

The floors creak loudly as I run up the stairs, echoing in the vacant apartment building. 

We’re meeting in one hour in the shed and I consider not showing up. I know he would just come up here though and knowing that reminds me how careless we’ve been. 

But I don’t want to stop seeing him either. I am not sure I _can_ at this point and as I watch my clock tick the seconds by, I am beholden to all the fear and hateful anxiety that has dogged my steps for so many years. 

*

The shed door is barely closed behind me before I say, “We need to talk.”

Ben pauses by the record player, rocking on his heels before he drops his hands by his sides and says nothing. 

I hated it when Rose said that to me. It usually preceded long and tense conversations about the fact that I worked too many hours, too many night shifts and how it was my fault all our house plants kept dying. She would cry, I would console her and things went right back to the way they were before these lovely chats. 

She wasn’t wrong, of course. She rarely was.

“Alright.” 

Ben looks so out of sorts that I can only watch as he turns back to the record, pauses, and then crosses the room to the card table without putting any music on. I have disrupted the routine, created static with my pale intensity. I pick at my sleeve, mind going a mile a minute as I think about all the people who might have noticed what Josephine has. Who might be talking about it to other people - or even to the Ministers. That it might already be too late for the discretion we were all too willing to toss aside. 

“You have to stop staring at me.” 

Okay, that might not have been the best approach. It’s too late to take the words back now. A telltale blush sweeps across my face and the silence grows laden with awkwardness. 

Ben doesn’t react. He’s a mountain and I am a raging river, as tall and unmovable as Everest. I wish he would get upset. Even just a little. I wish he would join me in my panic, but for some reason, he is starting to _smile_. It’s small, just a faint quirk of his lips, but he’s definitely smiling. 

“Can you be more specific?”

Is he… joking with me right now? 

I sputter like the fool that I am and then take a deep breath to calm myself down. I am probably as red as a fucking tomato and he seems to be thoroughly enjoying this fact as he leans back in his chair with an air of casualness that makes my eye twitch. 

“At the café. Josephine told me she saw you staring at me.”

“Tonight?”

What difference does that make? And why is he still smiling? Shouldn’t he be freaking out right now? Because I sure as hell am. 

“Yes,” I reply and now that incredulity is leaching into my voice. “And other days too.”

“Hm.”

Hm? _Hm?_ What does _hm_ mean?

“ _Ben_ , this is bad. What if someone else noticed?”

His jaw shifts and then he nods. “I guess I’ll have to be more careful about when I stare at you.”

“Or don’t stare at all,” I whisper urgently, eyes wide and arms crossed so tightly it’s a wonder I don’t fold over into a pretzel. 

His eyes are practically sparkling at me and his lips quirk into a crooked grin that makes me blush even hotter. 

“That’s not fair.” His voice is light and filled with something I do not initially recognize. He sounds _coy_ , which is absurd and about a million other things, but I am too flummoxed to know how to react to it. “What about all the times you stare at me?”

My jaw drops and I know I look stupid, but I can’t help it. He raises an eyebrow at me expectantly and my jaw snaps shut. 

“What - how are you - I do _not_ stare at you.”

I absolutely do but I’ll never admit to that.

“Yes you do. You’re far less covert about it than I am.”

“I look around the room at who needs their coffee. I would hardly call that staring.”

“You look around my part of the room quite often.”

“You would only notice that if you were staring at me. Which proves my point.”

“So you don’t deny it.”

I blink at him stupidly, wondering how in the world this conversation got away from me so quickly. We are supposed to be panicking right now - right? Not arguing over who stares at who more like we’re flirting or some… thing…

“Rey?”

Something strange happens to me when he says my name like that. When he is smiling and teasing and imploring me in all one measure. A small flicker of heat curls low in my stomach, followed by a curious flush of tingles. An _awareness_ that might have been there all along, but that I have totally and completely become attuned to now, has taken over me. 

“What was the question?”

He taps his fingers on the table, his gaze sweeping over my face and down to where my arms are tangled together in nervous repose. He opens his mouth, closes it and then nods to himself. He stands from the chair and goes to the record player, turning his back on me while he fiddles with the records. 

I don’t understand what just happened and he doesn’t seem inclined to clarify. 

I realize then that I have barely entered the shed at all. I look at the closed door and then back to the table. When I glance at him once more, I see that his left shoulder is raised slightly. That his back is tense and that he is taking an awfully long time picking a record to play. 

I can see his tell when he probably saw mine all along. 

Before I have even made up my mind I cross the room and sit in my usual spot. Only then do I see him relax. A few seconds later, the record player comes on and it’s some indie band I’ve never heard before. 

“What did you tell Josephine?” 

He still hasn’t turned around and I look at his guns, sitting in their holsters on top of the milk crates. He has so much more on the line than I do and though he doesn’t sound as amused as he did a second ago, he doesn’t sound overly concerned either. 

“I acted like I had no idea.”

“Hm.” There’s that fucking _hm_ again but I am not given time to react to that. “And what did she say to that?”

_...if he takes to his hand…_

I blanch and quickly look at the table before he can turn around and see the lie on my face. 

“She changed the subject after that.”

Ben takes his time returning to the table and although he doesn’t ask me another question about the matter, I catch a sliver of that crooked smile every so often when he thinks I am not looking. 

*

The next day, The Enforcer comes into the cafe and orders his coffee. I last approximately five minutes before I peek at him, and then only another two minutes before I do it again. 

He lasts a lot longer than I do but only because I don’t catch him as often. 

He’s right. He is a lot more covert than me. 


	7. Fire and Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He makes me want to do things I haven’t thought about in a long time. He makes me feel things I haven’t in a long time. 
> 
> And I have no idea what to do with that. 

I am trying to control myself but it’s like an alcoholic taking that first swig and then trying to put the bottle down. It’s difficult - much more than it should be. I don’t want to get carried away with my affections. To care too much when it could all be taken away so swiftly. But I am starting to notice things that I didn’t before. Or I did and I just did a wonderfully great job of lying to myself. 

I have started to notice how nice the Enforcer’s hands are; they’re big, the fingers strong and sturdy. He has lovely cheekbones. Not too proud; they sit nice and high, framing his eyes. 

And his eyes… His stupid, ever-loving eyes. 

When he’s in the café, they seem small and narrow, almost too narrow for his long, angular face. But they’re not small. Not at all. In here, where the candlelight is soft and the shadows are long, his eyes large and almond shaped. Their colour changes depending on his mood. When he is scheming - usually in the middle of a heated game of crazy-eights or Scrabble - they turn hazel. Almost a mossy green. When he’s angry, they go black with his fury. And when he’s looking at me the way he is right now, with his arm extended on the edge of the table and leaned back in the chair with the air of a king, when he’s watching me like the freckles on my face might spell out the secrets of the universe…

His eyes are soft and a daring shade of liquid honey. 

He makes me want to do things I haven’t thought about in a long time. He makes me _feel_ things I haven’t in a long time. 

And I have no idea what to do with that. 

“Your move,” I say with none of the bravado I did only nights earlier, when I squashed him at Scrabble and held the flighty confidence of a much different version of myself. 

Ben’s left shoulder comes up but I know this time it isn’t because the game. 

*

“Green tea please. Black.”

I say nothing and scurry off to collect his daily brew. The Black Enforcer is with him today. His name is Luke, I have learned, and he never bothers me. He orders a water, just like the other three times he has come in this week. The others are gone, presumably off to wherever their Paragon has sent them. 

I hope they never return. 

“That young one is back,” Josephine mutters to me in the kitchen. 

I say nothing to this either and get the kettle going. 

“What do you make of them?”

I pause as I get the green tea bags down and peer at Josephine over my shoulder. 

“Of who?”

“Those two.”

I finish getting the tea ready, taking my time before joining Josephine’s side to regard the café through the wooden doors. The Enforcers are the only two people there, sitting side by side and pouring over yet another map. 

I wonder if they’re getting close to catching whoever they’re after. I wonder if this means my Enforcer will leave soon. 

“I don’t know.” It’s as honest an answer as I can give. 

Josephine makes a soft sound, though I don’t know the meaning of it. She turns away from the door and grabs her cigarettes before heading into the alleyway. I stand there after she has gone, peering through the small glass window. 

My Enforcer looks up like he can sense me, and when his eyes meet mine I blush hotly and duck out of sight. 

*

It’s the next afternoon and Ben and I are out in the alleyway. The café has just closed and everyone will soon be heading to the church for confession, as I should be right now. It’s getting dark out already despite the fact that it is barely dinner time. I have my coat out and the garbage in my hand, and I can’t help but shiver. The wind is cold. 

He has surprised me out here once again. I almost make a snippy comment about it but there’s a nervous energy to him right now that makes me wary. 

“I can’t meet tonight.” 

He scans the alley like a hawk, taking in everything and nothing at once. We’re quite alone here, but one can never be too careful. 

“Oh. Okay.” I’m not bitterly disappointed at all. Nope. 

Ben’s gaze snaps to mine anyway because he always seems to see right through me. 

“There’s a raid. I have to be there.”

I stiffen and he goes on looking at me like he expected nothing less. He shouldn’t have told me that and I don’t know why he would risk it. He’s never told me about any of the things he does when he’s not at the café or meeting up with me in the shed. Unless he told me because… he is justifying skipping out tonight? Like he doesn’t want me to think it’s because it’s his choice or… But that’s preposterous. 

Any kind of response feels dangerous and he must sense that too because he sighs. 

“It isn’t anyone from the café.”

“Alright.”

“Is it?” he murmurs, almost thoughtfully. 

For some reason, my cheeks heat up. 

“Is what?”

“Is it alright?”

 _What_ _?_ How am I supposed to answer that?

“Is what alright?”

“That I can’t meet tonight.” I think he may smile but he doesn’t. 

“I - yes?”

The air feels less cold than it did a moment ago. The flush in my cheeks has spread to my chest now. I don’t know what he is asking me, but it feels significant. Intentional. 

Ben reaches out and takes the garbage bag from me before I can stop him. He tosses it in the dumpster and then returns his inscrutable gaze to me, his hand not quite relaxing at his side. 

“You can tell me if it isn’t.” 

I blink at him, my breath fogging up the air between us and my cheeks redder than Josephine’s tomato sauce. I have the insane urge to laugh hysterically, but I somehow quell that heady impulse. 

“My feelings won’t change anything.” 

They shouldn’t change anything. They _shouldn’t_. 

Ben looks down at the ground, his lips folding together as though he is chewing over the words he absolutely shouldn’t say. 

“I still want to know.”

Like those words. Like those words right there. 

“Why?” I can’t help but ask. 

His eyes do that warm thing they do when he is smiling without using his mouth. I track the changes on his face with borderline obsessiveness. He has a lot of beauty marks and moles. I could map the stars with them and still be no closer to knowing what is going on that head of his. And then, he takes a small breath and that warmth is gone. Tucked away behind the mask. 

I think my heart might explode but that’s probably just my insanity talking. 

“You should get going.” He puts his hands on the butts of his guns and nods towards the alley. “Confession will be starting soon.”

“It’s not.”

He turns to me sharply. 

“It’s not okay,” I clarify. 

I turn for the door like I am walking on stilts, my hand gripping the cold knob, I think, but I feel like I am floating on air and that nothing can touch me. When I look back at him, he is right where I left him. Only there is a smile there, now. A real smile, just for me. 

“See you tomorrow, then?” 

“Yes,” he says and there’s that liquid honey. There just for me. “Definitely, yes.” 

I think I float all the way to confession.

*

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last confession.”

“And what do you confess, my child?”

I sit on my side of the confessional, a dapple of holy water on my forehead and my heart full of blistering light that has nothing to do with the holy sacrament. 

“I confess that I could be greater service to the Lord and to my community. I live to serve, Father, and would do better to serve him as much as I can.”

This is all so rehearsed and I strangely find myself rolling my eyes. I quickly stop when I realize what I have done and bow my head once more. Luckily, the Minister has not noticed a thing. He’s too busy looking at his Bible - or a goddamned porno magazine for all I know - and barely looks up at me at all. 

“I assign you penance, child. Ten Hail-Mary’s and the prayer of our lord.”

“Yes, Father. Thank you for your guidance.”

Soon, I leave the confessional and head back outside. I usually feel like I need a shower after those but all I can think about is Ben. 

_Yes. Definitely yes._

*

I lay in bed, restless and unable to sleep. 

It’s silly to miss someone you saw only hours ago. It’s even sillier to miss that person when they are an Enforcer. But I can’t help but wonder where he is and what he is doing. Probably something I wouldn’t like. Probably something rather unpleasant, actually. 

And still, I can’t stop my wandering thoughts. 

I turn on my back and stare at the ceiling. Does he sleep like this - on his back? Or curled on his side? Does he hog all the covers, or does he snore? These are stupid thoughts, rekindling some adolescent feeling of heat in my lower stomach. 

I never missed sex before. I was just glad I was lucky enough to have been made a Menial and not forced into marriage as a breeder. But now…

It’s stupid. And insane. But I can’t help but remember something Josephine said the other day.

_...if he takes to his hand…_

Does he? Take to his hand. Does he take his time, or is he quick? And if he does it at all, what does he think about? Is he… proportionate? 

My cheeks flush with heat just as they did earlier in the alleyway. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this way. So long since I’ve even wanted to…

I push my hand beneath the covers and down my underwear. I gasp at how sensitive I am. How wet. And soon I am not thinking about anything anymore other than the sound of his voice and the mental images I hastily cobble together. That he is here too, hovering over me, all over and inside of me, and when the crest comes, I have a bite back a loud moan. 

I fall asleep soon after. 

*

I remember when I was thirteen and Ella Ringel and I were standing in my bathroom naked. We didn’t touch each other. We didn’t even kiss. We just looked our fill and then put our clothes back on. A youth’s curiosity and a touch of hormones - that was what it was for Ella. 

But I knew it was different for me. 

For a long time, I thought I was gay. I made my peace with it and one day, when I came home with my hair cut shorter than my brother’s and a piercing through my nose, my father didn’t say anything. Poe wasn’t remotely surprised, though that might have had something to do with the fact that he was also, indeed, gay. 

I wasn’t. Or at least, that wasn’t the full picture. 

I dated girls for a while. I wasn’t a very good girlfriend though. I attended sporting events, I poured myself into school to become a cop and I volunteered on the weekends. I was never available, always flitting off from one thing to the next. One of my girlfriends called me a hummingbird and it wasn’t until we broke up that I realized she had not meant it as a compliment. I just couldn’t slow down enough to take in what was happening around me. 

And then I met Kyle. 

He was sweet and soft spoken. A real pushover in class when we were busy doing burpees and climbing the rope and all our paramilitary training that I would not reflect on until years later was complete overkill for a bunch of kids that just wanted to be city cops for the most part. 

Kyle couldn’t keep up with us in class so my teacher partnered us together. I helped him get better at rope climbing and running. I was his coach and he was my padawan. With Kyle, I _had_ to slow down and it was only then that I realized that I was attracted to him the same way I have always been attracted to women. When we had sex - only once, right after graduation - he was just as gentle and soft as the way he spoke. 

He died during the first siege. 

I didn’t know until I went into work the next day, right before they put on a ban on women working at all. Of course we hadn’t been sleeping together by then because I had Rose, but I still remember bawling my eyes out in my cruiser while my partner Silvia held my hand and said nothing. 

As I sit across the table from the Enforcer now, thinking of things that happened almost a decade ago, I consider telling him all of it. We talk about everything, yet nothing at the same time. I don’t know any details about his life Before besides the fact that he likes music and Salgado and that he is likely from Indiana or Ohio, or somewhere like that. 

But I also know things that no one else would know about him. I know that his left shoulder comes up when he is unsure about something. I know that his eye twitches when he’s angry and I know that he has remarkably good aim with the ridiculously impractical guns in his holster. I know that he likes my tattoos even if he hasn’t said as much out loud and I know that he likes to say my name and for me to say his in turn. 

I know these things and though there is no guarantee of anything these days, I can't stifle the hope that comes with our tentative smiles. 

*

Ben must sense my pensiveness, but he doesn’t comment on it. He barely looks at me at all, in fact. 

It has started raining outside. I listen to it bouncing off the roof of the shed and shiver. It’s cold in here tonight. I keep my coat on, rubbing my hands together every so often. The night has gotten late. We should turn in soon, but I really don’t want to go out in the rain. Then I’ll be cold and wet, and… I don’t quite want to leave yet.

I think about what I did last night and my cheeks pinken. I wonder what Ben would think if he knew that I came to just the memory of his voice. 

“Another round?” 

I jump a little in my seat. Ben has been quiet tonight too and I find myself wondering how the raid went last night. I didn’t hear about any arrests today in the café, but sometimes it takes a while for these things to trickle in the gossip chain. He’s barely met my eyes all night, which is unusual for him. 

I almost tell him yes when I change my mind. 

“Are you okay?”

I don’t remember the last time I asked someone this. Menials are not allowed to ask questions like this; we only serve. But I am not a Menial when I am in here. I think. 

Ben looks up from the table. There is something different about him tonight. A dulled nullity to the shape of his eyes. I think of police shootouts and the shell-shock we would all wear every time we were forced to use our weapons. 

He looks a little like that and I know immediately that the raid did not go well. Not at all. 

“I’m fine.”

He isn’t. 

Normally, I wouldn’t push. Normally, I wouldn’t ask at all but all I can think about is him walking alone in the rain to wherever he sleeps for the night. Tossing and turning and thinking about whatever horrible thing that was either done to him last night, or that he did himself. 

But he doesn’t seem like the type to talk about his feelings. I understand that all too well. 

“They put me on the night shift a lot.” The words are stilted when they come out of my mouth. It is like I am speaking of someone who died a long time ago. “I got lucky compared to the other officers. I didn’t have to do highway patrol or traffic. The accidents were horrific sometimes, especially on the freeway.”

I pause, not quite closing my mouth. Ben tilts his head in questioning but doesn’t interrupt. I think it surprises us both when I continue. 

“I got a lot of domestics. Some drugs and gang stuff, but mostly it was some guy beating up his wife, or some girl beating up her boyfriend. Midnight seems to really bring it out in people.” It’s getting a little easier now, talking about this. So I keep going. “I had this one call out in the suburbs. It was a really nice neighbourhood, a great place to raise kids. This guy went crazy. He shot up his whole family with a shotgun and then he started shooting at us. He hit my partner in the leg and I remember how terrified I was. Not because he was shooting at us. Not because I knew I would have to shoot him. But because of all the blood.”

I am not even looking at him anymore but at the table, seeing through the cheap aluminum like I am back there again. Staunching Sylvia’s wound with my jacket and some fast food napkins. 

“Did your partner live?”

And then I am brought right back again. He looks different now. That strange blankness is gone and I am glad for it. 

“Yes. Did yours?”

I don’t know what he did in the Before. I don’t know if he was in love with someone and they died. I have no idea if he and Luke are friends, or even give two shits about one another, but I do know that they are cordial with one another and seem to partner up a lot and that if Luke was with him last night, something might have gone really bad the way it did for me that night all those years ago, in suburban hell and with my partner’s blood all over my hands. 

Ben is silent for so long that I am worried I have finally crossed the line. He always seems to _want_ me to cross those lines and now that I have put myself out there, I am terrified of being turned away. 

“He did.” He speaks so lowly that I think I do not hear him at first. 

“Well -”

“Others didn’t.”

All the air goes out of my lungs. I know what he is telling me right now. I can see it in the solemn line of his lips and the regretful tilt of his eyes. He has been so quiet all night because he is remembering. What he is. What I am. What this world has to offer people like us that are not really people anymore but instruments. Dancing on tangled strings. 

He killed someone last night. That is what he is telling me and suddenly, it feels colder in here than it did before. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I don’t want to hear about what he did, even if he had no choice. But I am far past the point of judging him or much of anyone. We’ve all done things we didn’t want to in the name of survival. My reflection knows all about those tearful, sniveling confessions. About all my sins. 

“I thought you might leave if I told you that.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Ben smiles, though there isn’t much humour in it and above us the heavens pour down, thundering rain against the roof. This cocoon is fragile and perilous and it feels like it will shatter apart at any moment. 

My fingers fold together like dead spiders. I should leave. But I don’t. 

“You’re afraid of me.” He nods after he says this and there is a bitterness to his tone that I have never heard from him before. “You are. And you should be.”

I remain impassive, even though my heart is skittering along like a hamster on a wheel. 

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are.” Dark, his eyes are dark and I know he is angry, but I don’t know how to fix it. “You should go. I’m the fucking plague and you should go.”

His eyes are glassy now, red veined and seething with something far worse than anger. I know because it’s the same look I give myself in the mirror, where I talk to you my dear reflection and try to transfuse some humanity back into myself. But my humanity has been siphoned off over the years. It was _taken_ from me. From all of us. 

Only now, I’ve found it again and even though I don’t want to leave because I know it will mean the end of this, us and everything, I don’t know how to fix him. 

“Okay.” I don’t get up right away and this apparently is the tipping point because he suddenly leans across the table to fix me with a scathing glare. 

“ _Go,_ Rey.”

It feels wrong, standing up. I know this because I do it too quickly and knock over my chair. He probably thinks I am terrified of him, that I am fleeing for my life, as pathetic as it is. Really, I don’t want him to see me cry. I have always hated crying, even in front of Rose. Always hated how I couldn’t get enough air, couldn’t control the tears until I was all cried out. 

I turn for the door, trying to stay composed. Trying to make it outside before I fall apart. 

I can’t even look at him, can’t bear the weight of his misery and self-loathing when mine is already so much to carry. And maybe that’s why he wants me to go - because he knows I am weak and I cannot stand it - or maybe it is because he’s realized that whatever this was can never be. Not in this life. 

I open the door and stumble into the pouring rain. It’s the kind of rain that makes it impossible to see more than two feet in front of you, just a sheer sheet of cold water and nature’s fury. I don’t hear the door close behind me and I keep going, walking ankle deep in freezing water. I think I’m going the right way, but I am too blinded by tears and rain to really know. Maybe I’ll wander out into the street and get arrested. Maybe I’ll keep going, just like I did when I was a kid. Getting lost between the fences of the houses and mired in the stains of the past. 

A hand closes around my arm, warm and tenuous in its grip. I almost slip away to be washed out with the rain, but that hand hangs on tight. Then, I am turned around, making a seemingly endless journey back to a place that shouldn’t exist. It’s full dark out and the shed door is closed which is probably for the best because someone might see. 

Though my personal safety is really the last thing on my mind. 

It’s his face that is there when he pulls me back to him. High above me, a pale oval and black hair drenched like a drowned puppy. His clothes cling to his form, outlining all the muscles I normally pretend doesn't give me an excited shiver. But I am not pretending anymore. I can’t see his eyes in the gloom, but I can feel the way his heart races under my palm. My hands have come up all on their own, not to push or pull, but just to feel. To know that I am alive and that he is real. To know what it is like to touch someone again. 

He holds me to him, his body a great big boulder shielding me from the cold wind. His hand comes up, first brushing the wet apple of my cheek and then cupping it, like I am something fragile and tender that he must handle carefully. My eyes close automatically when he presses his forehead to mine so that I might hear him speak over the howl of the wind and the thrashing of the rain. 

“This is why you should go,” he says, his deep voice breaking through the elements. 

I reach up, tears mixing salt strong with the rain, and curl my fingers in the hair on the nape of his neck. He is fire against me, hot to the touch. I shiver on a gasp, folding myself against him to steal some of his warmth into me. His hand slides down to my jaw, his fingers curling under the soaked strands of my hair and despite his proclamation he draws me closer to him, like I might douse some of his flames and mold him anew from the ashes, his hand an anchor on my lower back. 

I shake my head in his grasp, just once so that he can feel it. 

“It’s why I should stay,” I tell him. 

He makes some broken sound then but soon it’s lost when he presses his lips to mine. I arch up on my toes, in my plain loafers that are soaked through, pressing as tightly to him as I can. He takes my bottom lip into his mouth, gently sucking on it, before angling himself to take what he wants from me. And it is his and he is mine, and as I whimper into his mouth, he kisses me harder, kneading his hand into my back and gripping me in a crushing embrace. My hands are in his hair, in those black locks with their rare silver strands, and when he sweeps his tongue into my mouth with a wounded groan, I am there to open up for him. 

And we are there together, masked in the rain and safe within ourselves.


	8. Come To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re beautiful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the smut train! :D

I stand naked before my mirror, examining the same body I have looked at for thirty-two years. I am too thin. I note this, pinching the skin oh my hips and twisting this way and that in the hopes that curves that don’t exist will suddenly show themselves. I miss being a little heavier. I miss having a bum and hips and tits that swayed with my movements. 

Though Ben doesn’t seem to care about my weight, as far as I can tell. 

After our kiss the other night, I find myself doing this little dance every morning before I head out to the cafe. I am trying to eat a little more and I haven’t touched the liquor bottle hidden under my floorboards in quite some time. I have never been someone who has been vain about their looks, or overly worried about my appearance. I know I am pretty, if a little plain. I know that I have nice eyes and a nice smile - the rare times it comes out, that is. 

I want to be pretty. Not only for Ben but for myself. 

I stare back at my reflection, pushing out my bum in an exaggerated pose and almost burst into childish laughter. 

I can’t remember ever feeling this happy. 

*

“...think he’ll come around.” Luke abruptly stops talking when I approach their table with the coffee pot. 

I don’t look at him and just wait for Ben to raise his cup for more. He doesn’t usually order coffee anymore and I know they must have been out very late last night if he needs it. I haven’t seen him since that night in the rain, at least not in the shed, but he still comes into the cafe everyday. 

I redden just thinking about that night… and about every night that I have lain alone in my bed afterwards, like a horny teenager. 

I better not think about that right now. Not with him so near. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Ben replies without looking up at me. He pushes his cup to me with his thumb and leans back in his seat to regard his partner. “Land is drying out out west from the droughts. There’s only so many harvests left that way… they might be feeling generous towards our Lord and Saviour. Nothing is a sure deal with the farmers.”

I happen to glance Luke’s way while I am pouring and notice his expression falter. His eyes flick to me before going back to Ben. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my Enforcer give him the smallest of shrugs. 

That was… interesting. 

I leave quickly, my heart racing curiously fast. Normally, when I come over, they stop talking right away. I don’t want to be curious about what they’re talking about… but I am, of course. I head into the kitchen and start puttering around, cleaning without really paying attention to what I am doing. 

Why would they be talking about the farmers? Unless they’re worried about them becoming disloyal to the church… but that doesn’t make sense. The way they were talking, it sounded more like…

I pause with the dishrag in my hand and cock my head at the stove without really seeing it. There is a flutter in my chest that wasn’t there before, a slight tickle in the back of my head that my partner Silvia once called “Rey’s little spidey sense”. I had good instincts back in the day, when I was still allowed to use them. They’re dull now, like a knife that has been left to rust. But they’re still there, hidden beneath years of subservience and fear. 

Divined through the reckless wiles of the last few months. 

I decide not to ask Ben about it. Not until I am sure. Not until _he_ tells _me_. 

Even thinking about it is dangerous, so I try to put it out of my head. When I emerge from the kitchen a little while later, Luke is gone and Ben sits alone at his table, reading from a small leather notebook I have never seen before. It looks old and worn, the pages curled up and the spine warped. 

I glance from it to him and find him already looking at me. The cafe is quiet this afternoon and the sky looms in grey repose with the threat of flurries. 

My chest flutters again and I am a little appalled with myself that I do not know if it is from the nerves of my suspicion, or excitement that it could be true. 

“When are you off?” Ben murmurs. 

Lately, Joseph has taken to closing the cafe himself. I don’t know why and I don’t question him. He lets Josephine and I go home a little earlier and has been giving us both extra baggies of bread, almonds and milk before we leave with no explanation. 

Ben must have noticed the change in my schedule because he never usually asks me this question. 

“Five,” I answer just as quietly. 

He just nods at me and I know without him saying a word that I am to meet him in the shed tonight. It’s getting darker earlier and I won’t have to wait as long to creep out back to the shed. 

“Would you like another coffee?”

I notice his mug is only half drunk, but don’t say anything about it. He is warmth and honey as he gazes up at me, his lips quirked in a barely there smile. 

“I’ll switch to tea. Green, bl-”

“- black, no sugar,” I finish for him and then immediately blush and look away. 

“Right.” 

He hands me his mug and saucer and when I take it from him, his fingers brush my hand in a touch that is far too lingering to be accidental. I look at him then and it passes between us like electricity, like heat and air. A dark promise of what will happen tonight. 

When I go into the kitchen for his tea, Josephine is standing by the backdoor smoking. Her eyes are practically twinkling and I have to look away at the knowledge there. 

But she doesn’t say a word and the rest of the afternoon passes in relative peace. 

*

I am nervous for many reasons when I get home. 

I put my little baggie of food from Joseph on my counter, but I don’t take my coat off. I’ll be meeting Ben soon and…

It can’t be true, what I am thinking. 

Ben and Luke (or whatever Luke’s real name is) can’t be planning what I think they’re planning. I’m jumping to conclusions. Have to be. But there was something there, something in the way Luke looked at Ben when he said those things in front of me. 

And there was something to Ben’s small, responding shrug. His acceptance of my hearing it, as though to tell his partner that there was implicit trust there. 

Has he told Luke about me, then? Does he know the exact nature of our relationship? Does he even care? 

These questions don’t bother me as much as they should. 

I can’t help but think about the people Ben has killed. The man in the alleyway the day we got bombed. The people he killed the other night, some miners, from what I heard through the grapevine in the cafe, who proved to be disloyal to the Ministers… It’s not something I dwell on very much because I know Ben doesn’t want to kill people just like I don’t want to pretend to be a mousy little Menial without a spine. 

But here we are. 

I look up at the clock and then to the closed curtains concealing my windows. It’s almost entirely dark out now and a fresh wave of anxiety curls through me, only it’s followed by something that has nothing to do with what Ben and Luke might, or might not, be planning. 

We’re going to meet soon in the shed. 

I know the look he gave me earlier. I know it because it was probably similar to the look I gave him. I shouldn’t go out there. Something is happening, something big and consuming, and somehow, Ben is right in the middle of it. I don’t know what it is - if I misunderstood them earlier, or they are spies for the Ultimate Sinners, or I am just going crazy - but I do know that I am going out there in a few minutes. 

Out there to Ben. 

Because it’s not a question of if I will or won’t anymore. It’s not just a matter of fulfilling my own loneliness, or enjoying the company of another person. I know what this feeling is, deep in my chest. I know what it means when my stomach clenches and I get _wet_ just thinking about him and I wonder where he is and if he is thinking about me too. 

I was doomed the moment he set foot in the cafe, all those months ago. We both were. 

I turn for my front door and then waver back a step. My head aches from the bun and suddenly…

Suddenly, I don’t want to pretend anymore. 

I go to my bathroom and turn on the light. And there you are, reflection. Only you are me and I am you. It’s always been this way. Even when I tried to separate us. 

It’s all coming back to me now. My compass, buried beneath years of torture and degradation, and then the fear - oh God, the _fucking_ fear - they tried to take it away from me. 

But they failed. The compass is still intact and so I am. 

I reach up for my bun, that mark of subservience, and bit by bit, it all unravels, leaving me whole once more. 

*

I cup my elbows as I scurry across the yard behind my building, shivering from the cold. Snowflakes fall gently from the sky, swirling in the chilly wind. I make it to the shed door and pull it open, skittering inside at a strong gust of arctic wind. Just as I close the door behind me, I falter at the sight I find. 

Ben appears to be in the middle of pacing across the shed, his hand brushing his hair away from his face and a nervous tension to his body. 

I can’t help but gape. I’ve never seen him act like this before, but as soon as he hears me come in, he stops, his hand lowering from his hair and his cheeks flushing to a pretty pink. My hood is still on and snowflakes are melting on my cheeks and eyelashes when I realize I am just _staring_ at him like an idiot. 

“Hi,” I blurt out and immediately feel foolish. 

“Hey.”

He’s wearing a thick sweater, black and a little loose around the collar. I can see a hint of his shoulders peeking out, broad and defined. My cheeks heat up, prickling from the cold outside, and I find that I have absolutely no idea what to say to him. It’s like being a nervous teenager all over again, unsure in my bones. Like every movement is wrong somehow when rationally, I know that isn’t true. 

He sways on the spot before crossing the room to me, his steps slow and measured like I might take off into the night if he moves too fast. I go on standing there, watching as he gets closer until he is suddenly right before me. 

“Are you cold?” 

His voice is deeper than normal, I think. It heats me right up and I have to remember how to breathe properly. 

“No.” 

I _was_ cold, but I’m not anymore. Over his shoulder, I see that he hasn’t set up any games for us to play. A record plays softly from atop its milk crates, something mellow and acoustic. There is only one candle lit, sitting in the middle of the table and melting wax in a small pool. 

It all feels rather romantic, which only makes me blush even more. Who is this person, standing in my shoes? But maybe I’ve known all along. Maybe I’m just waking up. 

Ben, for his part, doesn’t smile, or do much of anything. His eyes seem darker than ever and there is a pause to his movements like he is just as unsure as I am. I’m tempted to run my finger across his full bottom lip but I haven’t quite worked up the nerve yet. Can I just touch him whenever I want? Or...

“You still have your coat on.” 

“Oh,” I sputter. “Right, I’ll…”

Before I can take it off, he reaches up and then pauses to see my reaction. I go still and just look at him, waiting breathlessly. 

Or he can touch me. I am perfectly happy with that, too. 

Ben pushes out a low breath and resumes course, gently pushing my hood back. My hair falls in a static curtain around my face, hair clinging to my dress and cheeks. He makes a soft sound when the hood falls away entirely and I can’t help but feel a little pleased. He’s never seen my hair down before. No one has for a very long time. 

My hair is so long, it falls to my waist. I never liked it long Before, but people change. 

Ben must forget what his intended goal was - presumably, to help me out of my coat - because his fingers are now brushing aside the strands clinging to my skin as though to test their texture. I don’t know what to do with my hands, so I fold them together in front of me, my scalp tingling as he touches my hair. 

“You’re beautiful.”

He doesn’t proclaim this with the feverish and overdone gusto other men have remarked to me with in the past. It doesn’t feel like a cheap ploy, nor is it an overly impassioned statement. If anything, he sounds awed and I know my cheeks are burning now, but I really don’t care. 

“So are you.” I say this without thinking and even though it embarrasses me a little, I absolutely mean it. 

He makes that sound again, like he did the other night in the rain. That wounded, hurt thing I know doesn’t stem from pain. This time, I meet him halfway when he kisses me, leaning up on my toes to press my lips to his. My lower abdomen feels hot and heavy, and my skin bursts into tingles everywhere we touch. 

I need more. I am starved all of a sudden and so is he. 

His hand slides into my hair along the nape of my neck as I take the initiative and gently flick my tongue against his lips. He groans, opening up for me and our tongues tangle together as we make light, breathy noises. I run my hand up his chest and he nips my lip, his other hand sweeping under my coat to fist the material of my dress. 

I shiver and press closer, until we’re flush together. 

Then he is shoving my jacket off, more impatient with each passing second. His kisses become searing as he takes the lead and licks into my mouth. My jacket falls to the floor, completely forgotten as I grip his shoulders and whimper against his lips. He is consuming me alive and I am his happy victim, hanging onto him for dear life. 

My heart is beating so hard, he can probably feel it against his chest. 

The chill of the outside world is forgotten as he backs away from the door and brings me right with him, not once relenting in his plying kisses. His hands slide through my hair, fisting those long locks in his grasp. His other travels across my back, to my hips and then down to my…

I moan uncontrollably into his mouth when he cups my bottom hard enough to lift me up on my toes. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he rasps darkly, drawing away just enough to kiss a trail across my cheek and down to my jaw. He squeezes and _fondles_ my backside, apparently having no issue with its size at all, and before I know what’s happening, he lifts me into his arms. 

My dress rides up enough so I can wrap my legs around his waist and I experience a heady head-rush. I’ve never been with someone big and strong enough to lift me up like this before. I feel powerful up here, and when I look down into his eyes, I can only grin at him. 

He huffs out a breath when I kiss him, my hands in his hair and tugging. There is a rock-hard heat against my core now, where he has me hoisted against him. I wriggle against it experimentally, delighting in his dragging moan that I feel all the way down to my toes. 

My back hits the wall and he holds me against him effortlessly, like I weigh no more than a sack of feathers. One of his hands unhooks from my thigh and slides up, bringing the material of my dress with him. 

“Tell me this okay,” he rasps into my chin, jaw and then my throat. “Tell me you want this too.”

Normally, I would find such a request ludicrous, if not outright pathetic. But there is nothing pathetic about the way he says this; he is desperation and need, his voice dark and raspy and _fuck_ , I’m _soaked_ now. I wonder if he can feel it where he is pressed against me. 

“Please,” I keen into his ear, “Please, I do. I want this too.”

He groans ardently into the crook of my neck and then he is tugging the neckline of my dress aside so he can suck on the point where my shoulder and neck meet. My head thumps against the shed wall as I close my eyes and moan into the chilly air, the candle basking us in soft orange light. His teeth scrape, marking me as his and before I know it, my hips arch into his, seeking friction and relief. 

He rocks back, his cock long and thick against me, right where I need him most. 

“ _Ben_ ,” I rasp brokenly into his shiny black hair. I rub my face against those soft locks and soon we set a filthy rhythm together, rubbing and bucking against one another. His hand squeezes the flesh of my thigh before turning inward and when his fingers brush against my soaked panties, I whimper into his hair. 

He _growls_ , like a rabid animal, and a great thrill goes through me. I want to hear him make that noise again, so grasp his hair and _pull_. 

And I am not disappointed. 

I can feel the hardened edge of his deep groan right in my aching core, where his fingers are becoming less tentative. He presses against me boldly, applying hard pressure to my clit through the wet fabric. When I stifle a moan into his hair and pant his name weakly, he tears his mouth off my neck and kisses me again, bruising and punishing. 

The moment he pushes my underwear aside and manages to slide a finger inside me, I nearly weep with relief. His fingers are much thicker and longer than mine. They brush up against a place I had forgotten about and my spine arches of its own volition as I fight not to moan and thrash in an embarrassing way. 

But Ben is determined. 

He crooks his fingers and then pumps them into me, breathing hard on my neck when it becomes too much for me to kiss him back. Muscles clench hard, contracting around his thick digits as I gasp and bite back the sounds I want to make. His hips snap against mine as though he wishes he was already inside me and he presses feverish kisses into my cheek and throat. Everything is funnelled down to where he is steadily thrusting his fingers and when he presses his thumb against my clit, swiping once, twice, then a third time, I -

I drown out a raspy cry into his shoulder, my eyes closed and sheets of light and colour lighting up my eyelids. An explosion of tingles bursts through my cunt and as I drench his fingers, I can only squeeze his arms as I come so hard, I almost blackout. 

His eyes are dark when mine open, his pupils blown wide. He is breathing just as harshly as I am, like he came right with me, and before I can wonder if he _did_ , he suddenly turns us and then I am placed on the table on my back. He’s shaking when he reaches for his belt buckle, so I lean up to help him. It’s too cold for us to take our clothes off, so instead of shoving his pants down, I look up at him, my cheeks pink and my eyes bright, before reaching for his length. 

He hisses sharply, his lips parted and pink, and suddenly I feel like flying. I did that to him and that was… quite a reaction. My heart aches with the things I’ve lost, only to find it here, in this cedar shed just on the threshold of winter. 

I can’t wait anymore. 

I pull on his hips and he follows willingly, standing before my spread legs and yanking the skirt of my dress up. He pushes my underwear aside and leans down to angle himself, and though this moment should be awkward, it isn’t. It feels more precious than anything in the world. Blunt pressure meets my core, where my muscles are still fluttering through the aftershocks of my orgasm, and he pauses to gaze down at me with that awed, wondering look there again.

“Rey,” he says, though his voice is so husky, I know he is almost overcome. 

Instead of saying anything, I pull him down so he is flush against me. I have a brief second of panic and hope the table will hold our weight, before I forget to worry about anything because suddenly, he’s sliding into me. 

He is thick in his advance and there is searing pressure, but only in the good way that comes with feeling full and warm. I look up at the ceiling and listen to the way he takes me, his breath choked and his groans deep and guttural. He presses his face against my throat, his broad shoulders tightening as he sheathes himself inside me, root to tip. 

We stay suspended like that for several seconds, like we’re underwater. 

“ _Oh_ ,” I say in the smallest voice possible. 

I forgot this too. The closeness, the blistering pleasure of having someone else inside you. My cunt spasms around him and he makes a desperate sound at that, his hips flexing as though he can’t help it. I hike my thighs around his hips, urging him deeper inside and this time we both moan together. 

He withdraws halfway and then slowly thrusts back in. Soon, he isn’t trembling as badly and he becomes more the way I am starting to know him. Confident and _conquering_. I make a needful little mewl when he sets a rhythm that quickly builds up from gentle and almost sweet, to frantic and roughened thrusts. 

“ _Yes,_ ” I keen into his ear and he bites my shoulder in response, sucking another lovebite into my skin. “Yes, Ben… _mmmph_.”

“You feel - _fuck_ \- you feel so _fucking_ good,” he grunts into my throat. “So _tight_ and _wet_ … fuck baby.”

I make a strangled sound when he calls me that and then he is _pounding_ into me so hard, I slide halfway across the table. He grips the edge to prevent me from moving any further and we might be making too much noise, but neither of us seems to care. I think I am going to come again. In fact, I _know_ I am going to come again.

It comes on so quickly, his bulk rubbing against my clit with each pump of his hips and his cock striking that place inside me, over and over, that I start shaking madly beneath him. 

“Fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck._ ”

My back bows and then it washes over me. My nipples tighten and Ben has to staunch my cry with his mouth, his chest rumbling with his own impending end. I’ve barely come down when he moves even faster, his breath whooping from his chest in wild bursts. 

“Rey - can I-”

“Come in me,” I tell him raggedly. “Come inside me, Ben.”

He presses his forehead against mine, his eyes closed and his face screwed up in rapture before his rhythm first stutters and then loses all fluidity. He bites back a roar, grounding the sound out through teeth and pressing his nose against mine as his hips shudder through his release. 

Then, we go still against one another, breathing through the fallout like two survivors. 

My fingers curl into his hair and he relaxes against me, his hand coming up to blindly cup my face. His stomach presses into mine with each breath and I could cry right now. I might be already. 

I haven’t felt this close to another human being in over ten years. 

“I need to tell you something,” Ben whispers into my skin, though I think this is just because his voice is temporarily gone. He is still buried inside me and I feel his seed leaking out. It should be gross but it isn’t. 

I snuggle closer to him, wiping my tears on his sweater. 

“Tell me later?” It almost comes out as a plea and when he nods his head against mine, I press a fluttering kiss to his neck. “I just want to stay like this for a little longer.”

And we do, locked together on that table while soft music and weak candlelight smother us lovely. 

*

We end up in my apartment later. I think he just wants to come in to clean up, but when I emerge from the bathroom in my night clothes, he’s lying on my bed with his boots off. 

He looks up at me then and I can’t help but note how vulnerable he looks. So wounded and fragile, like he expects me to kick him out. 

I curl up on the bed beside him and he wraps his arms around me, cradling me to his chest. He takes a deep breath, like he is relieved and I almost want to call him an idiot for ever thinking I would turn him away, but I know too well how perilous this all is. 

“What did you need to tell me?” 

He strokes my hair for a moment without answering and I can see his throat bobbing when he swallows thickly. Suddenly, he shimmies down the bed a little so we are eye level, but he doesn’t let go of me. It’s cold in here too, so I curl closer, burying my feet in the covers and shivering. 

Though I think this might have more to do with the solemn look in his eyes. I am afraid of what he is going to tell me because I already know. 

“Do you trust me?” Ben whispers and I know my answer to this too. 

“Yes.”

He blinks at my quick response, but he doesn’t look relieved. I lift a hand to his face and rub a soothing circle on the arch of his cheek. 

“Tell me, Ben.”

He folds his lips together and pulls me even closer, like he is the one who needs protecting from the darkness of the night. And when he tells me in a voice trembling with too many things to name, “I’m with the Resistance” I feel no surprise at all. 

Only crushing fear that the things I have found to tether me to this world may one day soon be taken away from me again.


End file.
